Netwar Front

2003-05-17T20:43:00.000-03:00

The New
White-Collar Crime:
Techno-Slacking

It's getting easier than ever to convince your customers, supervisors and employees that you're hard at work -- firing off e-mail messages and opening files on your office PC while you're really attending your kids' soccer game or sleeping in. Services like GoToMyPC.com enable users to manipulate their office computers by remote control -- even going so far as to move the cursor on the screen, open documents and print them on the networked office printer. E-mail timers allow workers to compose messages during the day and then queue them to be sent hours after they've gone to bed, giving the impression that they're up burning the midnight oil. Instant Message software can be reconfigured so that the "idle" message that pops up signaling inactivity is disabled, making users look perpetually available. And BlackBerry aficionados can change their settings to make on-the-road e-mail look like it came straight from the office PC. Psychologists call these activities "impression management," but other see signs of a disturbing trend: "If you're out playing golf, and you look like you've spent four hours in the office… If everybody does that, the company goes bankrupt," says Stuart Gilman, director of the Ethics Resource Center in Washington. A recent survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 59% of HR professionals had personally observed employees lying about the number of hours they'd worked, and 53% said they'd seen employees lying to a supervisor, a jump of eight percentage points in six years.

more @ Wall Street Journal. (subscription required)

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2003-05-17T15:22:00.000-03:00

Sony's Next
Generation Videogame:
PlayStation Portable

Sony announced its latest salvo in the videogame wars: a small, lightweight videogame device called PlayStation Portable (PSP for short), which will hit the shelves toward the end of 2004 and will feature a 4.5-inch screen and a high-end processor for running games. The PSP will be capable of linking by wire to other PSPs, cell phones, PCs and Sony's PlayStation 2. Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi says the PSP will be "the Walkman of the 21st century."

more @ Wall Street Journal. (subscription required)

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2003-05-17T15:06:00.000-03:00

Web Publishers
Expand
to Old Media

Online publishers are venturing into radio and television, a sure sign that digital media are going mainstream. This week Slate announced it will be working with National Public Radio to produce a daily radio show, and The Smoking Gun, a celebrity crime site, has plans to develop two half-hour shows for broadcast on Court TV. Meanwhile, Classmates.com is working with Twentieth Television to create a reality-TV show based on reuniting long-lost school buddies. "This is a sign that these companies have reached a certain amount of staying power and are trying to satisfy their audiences in new markets," says a Jupiter Research analyst. "Modern media companies must be in different mediums." Traditional media ventures have long since broadened their outreach, cranking out magazines and TV shows as well as Web sites, but the migration of Web enterprises toward TV and radio is a fairly new phenomenon. Several efforts by companies such as Pseudo.com and Digital Entertainment Network were cut short a couple of years ago by the technology bust, but Web entrepreneurs have high hopes for the latest efforts. "NPR's loyal audience and nationwide reach coupled with Slate's innovative delivery of news and information is the perfect marriage of radio and the Internet," says Slate publisher Cyrus Krohn.

more@ CNet News.

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2003-05-17T14:51:00.000-03:00

Stanford Develops
Super-Speedy
Web Page Rankings

Researchers at Stanford University have developed several techniques designed to make calculating Web page rankings, such as those used by the Google search engine, up to five times faster. Currently, the ranking algorithm used by Google can take several days to search and rank 3 billion Web pages. To speed up Google's Computing PageRank algorithm the Stanford team used three strategies. First, they employed "extrapolation" methods, which make some broad assumptions about the Web's link structure that aren't necessarily true, but do speed up the PageRank process. The results can then be refined using the original PageRank software. A second strategy involved an enhancement called "BlockRank," which eliminated the redundancy of ranking pages that all belong to the same Web site. Finally, the team used "Adaptive PageRank" to eliminate more redundancy caused by reprocessing Web pages that have been ranked early in the ranking procedure. "Further speed-ups are possible when we use all these methods," says Stanford graduate student Sepandar Kamvar. "Our preliminary experiments show that combining the methods will make the computation of PageRank up to a factor of five faster." The hope is that eventually Google's ranking mechanism could calculate personalized page rankings dictated by an individual's interests, or customized to a particular topic."

more @ Science Daily.

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2003-05-17T14:12:00.000-03:00

Microsoft's Licensing
and Weak Security:
Linux World's Choice

In a new report called "A Look at Alternatives to Microsoft," the Gartner research firm says that governments throughout the world are encouraging departments and businesses to consider alternatives to support Linux, an increasingly popular alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system. This development is taking place in China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and several European and South American countries. Gartner says the attractiveness of Linux seems to be attributable to widespread perceptions that Microsoft insists on unattractive licensing arrangements and offers inadequate software protections against security breaches.

more @ Information Week.

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2003-05-17T13:51:00.000-03:00

South Korea's "Citizen
Reporters" Account
80% News Coverage

The increasingly popular South Korean online news site ohmynews.com has more than 26,300 of its readers registered as "citizen reporters" who account for about 80% of the site news coverage (the rest of which is written by ohmynews's 38 professional writers and editors). The
mainstream press is critical of ohmynews's journalistic methods, but senior editor and founder Oh Yeon-ho says that his intention is to "say goodbye to 20th century journalism," by showing that every citizen can be a reporter. "We put everything out there and people judge the truth for themselves."

more @ San Jose Mercury News.

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2003-05-17T13:43:00.000-03:00

Microsoft PR Kills
UK MSN iLoo
Portable Toilet Project

Microsoft and its public relations firm are now saying that what they themselves thought was a hoax (the development of the iLoo, a portable toilet complete with wireless keyboard and Internet access) actually was a real project of the company's MSN group in the UK. The original press release indicated that the iLoo would offer its users "a unique experience." An MSN product manager now says: " "We jumped the gun basically yesterday in confirming that it was a hoax and in fact it was not," said Lisa Gurry, MSN group product manager. "Definitely we're going to be taking a good look at our communication processes internally. It's definitely not how we like to do PR at Microsoft." In any event, whether really a hoax or really real, the project is now dead -- flushed, as it were.

more @ USA Today.

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2003-05-17T13:16:00.000-03:00

New Hack Weapons
Boost Arsenal
Against DDoS Attacks

Two graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University have proposed different ideas for defeating the dastardly denial-of-service attacks that can overwhelm and disable a vulnerable ISP. One suggestion, from Abraham Yaar, takes advantage of the unused bits in the headers of network traffic to establish a "data fingerprint" based on the route the information traveled through the network. If a server came under attack, network administrators could use the digital fingerprint to decide whether to block all traffic with the same fingerprint. The second proposal, presented by XiaoFeng Wang, suggests that servers use "puzzles" -- problems that occupy a certain amount of processing time to solve -- as a way to discourage any computer from sending too much mail at any one time. While a similar idea has been proposed before, Wang added an auction-like transaction to further allow legitimate traffic to win out over attacks. "Our mechanism enables each client to 'bid' for resources by tuning out the difficulty of the puzzles it solves and to adapt its bidding strategy in response to apparent attacks," says Wang.

more @ CNet News.

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2003-05-17T13:07:00.000-03:00

New IBM Mainframes
Will Offer
On-Demand Computing

IBM is introducing a new line of mainframe computers humorously code-named T-Rex (getting back at critics who wrote mainframes off as dinosaurs) and more formally known as z990 systems. The z990 promises an increase of 40% in processing power over previous models, and lets customers turn processors on and off as the demand for processing fluctuates (and pay only for the processing actually used). It's part of IBM's strategy to offer on-demand computing.

more @ New York Times.

2003-05-17T13:02:00.000-03:00

Google Local
News Search Service
Without Borders

Google is expanding its popular news service overseas, establishing local news search services in Canada, the U.K. and Australia. The new ventures will enable users to "track topics of local interest, as well as those from around the world," says Google co-founder Larry Page. At the same time, Google has begun staffing its New York office, with the goal of hiring 100 employees for what will become its East Coast headquarters. The timing of the announcement highlights Google's ascendance in the search market -- last week, rival Overture said it would be cutting 100 jobs (although Overture was quick to say its layoffs resulted from the need to integrate its recent acquisitions). Meanwhile, Overture CEO Ted Meisel says he anticipates strong growth in the coming year, and predicted the Internet search and paid listings market would soar to $15 billion a year by 2008.

more @ E-Commerce Times.

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2003-05-17T12:57:00.000-03:00

iLoo Internet
Toilet a UK
MSN's Hoax

The iLoo, described in a press release last week as a portable toilet with wireless keyboard and an extending height-adjustable plasma screen in front of the seat, doesn't exist: it was just a joke. Microsoft says the hoax press release came from the company's MSN division in the U.K. and was not a "Microsoft-sanctioned communication." It all just goes to show that you can't believe what you read anymore, not even the toilet jokes.

more @ CBS News.

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2003-05-17T11:45:00.000-03:00

Oxblood's account
of Bill Brown's
book tour event

"So I went to the big road show last night [in Toronto], which was lots of fun. I was dressed in a casual yet fashionable sense and turned many heads when I went in. Then I did up my fly and wasn't bothered for the rest for the night.

Bill burst into tears when he saw me because he was so happy. It was very touching. Then I slapped him and told him to toughen up. He was fine almost immediately.

There were several zine authors, and a few bands at the event. Bill was first up. For those of you who aren't aware, Bill wrote his first novel called "Saugus To The Sea" and it is available NOW.

What was interesting about Bill's reading was that he didn't read. He showed slides. Many slides. Some had interesting stories behind them, and others had Bill's stories behind them. There was even a curious double exposed picture of Bill's mother reclining on a fortress-like wall with a disembodied hand clasping her thigh. I was strangely aroused. And after several more slides of restaurant interiors and a tree that Bill couldn't identify, it was all over. There was wild applause by a roomful of people who had been drinking beer for at least an hour."

more @ Cult of Dead Cow.

2003-05-17T03:13:00.000-03:00

Big-dollar Bush
Donors Revealed
in Court Documents

A network of big donors to George W. Bush called "the Pioneers" was far more extensive than previously known, producing perhaps half the record-smashing $100 million for his 2000 presidential race, court documents show.

While the Bush campaign initially made public a list of 226 members of the Pioneer network, there actually were more than 500, The Dallas Morning News and New York Times reported today.

As the president prepares for re-election, he is expected to tap the same network of wealthy donors to build what Bush advisers hope will be a $200 million campaign treasury.

Half of the Pioneers are from Texas. Among the previously undisclosed names are House Speaker Tom Craddick of Midland, Dallas Stars and Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks, professional golfer Ben Crenshaw and Austin lobbyist Randy DeLay, brother of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land.

Among the others are Washington lobbyist Haley Barbour and Hollywood movie producer Jerry Weintraub.

Although each Pioneer pledged to raise $100,000 for the Bush campaign, some produced three to five times that amount.

more @ Houston Chronicle.

2003-05-17T02:56:00.000-03:00

"Salam Pax"
Plays Americans for
Fools in Iraq

by David Warren

The star of the blog "Where is Raed?" is part of an anti-Western conspiracy

"Salam Pax" is rising as one of the media stars in postwar Iraq. He began blogging from Baghdad well before the war, and has come back sporadically since. (He calls his blog "Where is Raed?") He is the darling of fellow bloggers in the West, who light up with links whenever he appears on the Web. He has been written about in the New Yorker magazine and elsewhere, and his jottings copied into the Guardian in the Britain. Not bad for a person whose very existence has been skeptically queried. And who does a superb job of covering his traces, creating fresh firewalls around himself in the very moments when he appears to be giving his identity away.

I am quite certain he exists. That isn't the scandal. He has a family and a history and even a real-life name. But without compromising sources, and thus endangering lives, including Salam's own, one may discover a great deal about him from carefully reading his blog, and following obvious leads from there.

Salam is the scion of a senior figure from Iraq's Baathist nomenclature. He was brought up at least partly in Vienna, which is the OPEC headquarters; his father was therefore an oilman, and possibly a former head of Iraq's OPEC mission. Another clue is a hint that his grandfather was an Iraqi tribal chief, from which I infer that his father was one of the Iraqi tribal chiefs that Saddam Hussein rewarded for loyalty, outside the Tikrit clan.

Salam has an easy familiarity not only with the upscale Baghdad in which he has been living, and which he selectively describes through the jaded eyes of a true insider, but also with most Western fashions and things. This is what gives him his plausibility to Western readers. He drops many hints that he is a homosexual, suggesting reckless candour. (I'm inclined to doubt these.) His English is superb and colloquial. He has those Tariq Aziz qualities. There are nightmares in his background, but the foreground is smooth, charming, self-confident, man of the world -- tending involuntarily to smugness. He can tell you anything, and seems to enjoy putting on the show.

He refers casually to pseudonymous friends, who are also children of the deposed Baathist elect. They all know their way around but, unlike their parents, have never carried the weight of responsibility. They were of a class, but not yet fully in it -- products of a very luxurious bubble. Or perhaps Salam himself or any one of them was directly employed by Mr. Saddam's very extensive, and in places quite sophisticated, network of Soviet-modelled spy and disinformation networks -- we cannot know yet.

What we can know, just by reading his blog, is that this Salam is up to no good. He is spreading "inside views" of the new Iraq, not only to the blogosphere, but directly among the journalists still encamped at the Meridian (formerly Palestine, formerly Meridian) hotel. Not the "embeds" who've gone home after remarkable learning experiences, but those "hacks" not yet transferred to the next breaking news story, and so still kicking around this mysterious city of Baghdad, trying to figure out what's happening without exposing themselves overmuch to danger.

And they lap it up. They depend on translators and guides to show them around, and seem only partially aware that the people who've come forward to provide them with these services are almost all unemployed former Baath regime officials. (They trust them because they speak English so well.)

more @ The Ottawa Citizen.

2003-05-17T02:41:00.000-03:00

Political Struggle is
Between "Dominators"
and "Conciliators"

Dominators rule

by Michael Krepon

Forget hawks and doves. The post–Cold War political struggle is between “dominators” and “conciliators.” Right now, thanks especially to Osama bin Laden, those who believe U.S. national security lies in raw military power, not cooperative agreements, are in control.

The Cold War battles between hawks and doves are history. The new fault line in U.S. national security strategy is between “dominators” and “conciliators.” Both groups can be easily caricatured.

Dominators believe in leading by example, not by consensus or building coalitions. They are unapologetic about the primacy of U.S. power and the ineffectuality of treaties. Conciliators are protective of treaties by nature. They seek to devalue weapons of mass destruction—by example, by multilateral diplomacy, and by strengthening arms control regimes. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer has described the differences between the two groups as those who believe in power pitted against those who believe in paper.

Thanks to Osama bin Laden, dominators now rule the roost in Washington. The terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon gave President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wide latitude to implement their preferred remedies. Notwithstanding the close division on Capitol Hill between Republicans and Democrats, U.S. national security policy is now heavily lopsided toward power projection and away from treaty regimes and preventive diplomacy.

The resulting imbalance is not sustainable. By elevating preemption from a military option to a doctrine, the administration has made coalition-building increasingly difficult. And the more the Bush administration wages war, the harder it will become to recruit followers.

Power-projection capabilities, combined with the celebration of triumphant American values, constitute far too narrow a base on which to maintain U.S. diplomatic leadership. The hubris reflected in the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy invites not just the scorn of diplomatic historians, but also a serious reckoning ahead. Overreaching will eventually generate a corrective balance, which could come at considerable cost. When military options are strengthened at the expense of other instruments of national protection, lives are unnecessarily placed at risk. Battles against proliferators cannot be truly won when treaties embodying disarmament norms are scorned or systematically weakened.

more @ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

2003-05-17T01:51:00.000-03:00

David Nelson,
could you step aside
for a few moments?

The War on David Nelson

by Margie Boule

If your name is David Nelson you can expect to be hassled, delayed, questioned and searched before being allowed to board aircraft anywhere in the United States for the foreseeable future.

Since the horrific attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the federal Transportation Security Administration has, without any public announcement, created a two-tiered list of names "to protect our aviation system," says Nico Melendez, the agency spokesman for the West Coast, who is based in Los Angeles.

The name David Nelson apparently is on one of those lists.

"There is a 'no-fly' list," he says. "That's people who cannot fly, period," because they've been determined to be or are suspected of being "a threat to civil aviation or to national security."

Details about the list are "considered sensitive security information and cannot be released to the public," Nico says, but the Wall Street Journal suggests there are about 300 names on the "no-fly" list.

There's another list that Nico calls the "selectees list." Might as well call them "suspectees." This is a much larger list of names, accumulated, Nico says, from information obtained from intelligence agencies and the airlines. These folks may be allowed to fly but only after they're intensely scrutinized by airline, law enforcement and security personnel.

People whose names are on the two lists undergo what is not a routine security screening, in which you're asked to remove your shoes or empty your pockets. This week 18 men named David Nelson, all residents of Oregon, confirmed they have been repeatedly delayed at airport counters and security checkpoints in the last year or so.

Take the February experience of Dave Nelson of Salem, a lobbyist whose largest client is the Oregon Seed Council. Dave often travels for business, sometimes accompanying the governor on trade missions. "We were on our way to a trade show in Atlanta," Dave says, "trying to use the auto-check-in for baggage. We punched in our information, and the computer wouldn't accept it."

Dave and his wife, Leah, stood in line until an agent was available at the Delta counter. "We gave him our info, and he kept punching on his computer for about 10 or 15 minutes. . . . Then he says, 'I have to go in the back room.' He took off, and we stood there another 10 minutes. I asked L1 another clerk to find out where he'd gone."

After more waiting, they were told a supervisor was being sought. "Nobody would tell us what was going on," Dave says. "It's been 30 or 35 minutes by now. Finally the guy came out and said, 'You'll have to talk to the cop behind you.' We turned around, and there's a security guy." Dave says the officer told him there was a list of suspicious people, "and you're on the list."

Dave was asked for I.D. and turned over his driver's license. "They called downtown and ran a criminal check, and I was clean. Then the counter clerk had to call national Delta and get permission for me to go on the airplane. We were now pretty close to takeoff time." Dave and his wife were issued tickets, but again at the gate Dave was thoroughly frisked, searched and identified.

At the airport in Atlanta on the way back, the same thing happened. "The woman punched in my name and said, 'Oh, no, Mr. Nelson . . .' "

more @ The Oregoniam.

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2003-05-16T03:15:00.000-03:00

Verizon to
Transform Payphones
to Wifi Terminals

Verizon Communications, following the lead of Bell Canada, is planning to install WiFi terminals in payphones located in busy urban areas, according president Lawrence Babbo. "All of our payphone people have already told us (that the phones would make good wireless access points.) That will probably be the vehicle we use, probably in Manhattan." Verizon already offers WiFi equipment to its DSL customers, and last November began offering WiFi connectivity to small and medium-sized businesses. Bell Canada has been testing the concept at payphones in Toronto and Montreal, and several independent phone companies are interested in following suit.

more @ Associated Press News.

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2003-05-16T03:07:00.000-03:00

NEC Set
to Launch
Mobilepro Handheld

NEC will launch its MobilePro 900 in the next couple of weeks, pitching the high-end handheld to niche markets such as hospitals and businesses with dispersed sales forces. The MobilePro 900 is the latest "tweener" device aimed at users who need the mobility of a handheld combined with the power of a laptop. Like a mininotebook, the 1.8-pound MobilePro 900 features a keyboard almost as large as those found on regular notebooks and an 8.1-inch screen. "Doctors like the PDA layout, but they found they had a high attrition rate with PDAs because everybody drops them," says a NEC marketing director. Unlike tablet PCs or the upcoming mini-PCs, NEC's device does not contain a built-in hard drive, and it runs Windows CE rather than a full-fledged PC operating system, but it features a longer battery life than its tablet-style counterparts -- up to eight hours on a single charge or five hours when connected to a WiFi network. The MobilePro 900 will be priced at $899.

more @ CNet News.

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2003-05-16T02:57:00.000-03:00

All Eyes of
Music and Film
Industry on iTunes

The success of Apple's newly launched iTunes Music Store has drawn the attention of potential rivals, who will go head-to-head with the popular service when Apple extends it to Microsoft-based PCs at the end of this year. Among the contenders are pressplay and MusicNet, backed by the major record labels; Listen.com's Rhapsody; Musicmatch; FullAudio; and Echo, a music venture backed by Best Buy, Borders Group, Virgin Entertainment Group and others. In addition, AOL plans to introduce a pay-per-download service late this year and Amazon and MSN also are exploring the possibility. "Everyone in the music industry, and the film industry, and others, are looking at Apple and saying, 'Oh my God,'" says Warner Music Group executive VP Paul Vidich. "There's no question it has sparked new interest." Part of the allure of Apple's iTunes is the flexible arrangements CEO Steve Jobs negotiated with the record labels, which enable users to move their 99-cent songs to an unlimited number of portable iPod players, and burn as many as 10 identical CDs containing the same playlist. It's anticipated that many of the competing services will try to duplicate this flexibility, although Apple concedes it will be difficult to match the simplicity and elegance it's achieved with its own hardware and operating system. Meanwhile, several potential online-music players are staying on the sidelines for now. "Apple's success in the Mac environment hasn't yet proven that this is a real business with decent margins," says Yahoo VP Dave Goldberg. "If it is, a lot of major players will get into the space."

more @ Wall Street Journal. (subscription required)

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2003-05-09T01:49:00.000-03:00

DJs Suspended
for Playing
Dixie Chicks

Country station KKCS has suspended two disc jockeys for playing the Dixie Chicks, violating a ban imposed after the group criticized President Bush.

Lead singer Natalie Maines told a British newspaper she was "ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."

"We pulled their music two months ago, and it's been a difficult decision because how can you ignore the hottest group in country music," station manager Jerry Grant said.

He said there has been discussion about whether to reinstate the music, but the DJs, Dave Moore and Jeff Singer, became impatient.

"They made it very clear that they support wholeheartedly the president of the United States. They support wholeheartedly the troops, the military. But they also support the right of free speech," Grant said.

The station has received a couple of hundred calls and 75 percent favored playing the music.

more @ Washington Post.

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2003-05-09T01:32:00.000-03:00

Rural Wireless
Made MIT Pulls Out
of Media Lab Asia

As the result of disagreements with India's new minister of education over the focus and management of Media Lab Asia's research projects, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is withdrawing from the collaboration it began in 2001 with India's information technology ministry. The disputes have been both philosophical and bureaucratic: the new minister, Arun Shourie, has been unhappy that the lab's salary structure does not follow that of the Indian civil service, and he apparently also disagrees with MIT's focus on developing rural wireless networks and building speech interfaces to make information more accessible to illiterate people. MIT Media Laboratory director Nicholas Negroponte said the dissolution of the relationship "will certainly make us think," because "90% of what happened was driven by the change of minister, very much outside of our control." Media Lab Asia will probably continue the use of that name, since MIT has never trademarked the term 'Media Lab'.

more @ New York Times.

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2003-05-09T01:20:00.000-03:00

TV-Show Swapping
Catches Hollywood
by Surprise

The proliferation in European broadband Internet access is fueling a new trend -- TV-show swapping -- which enables European viewers to catch the latest U.S. sitcoms just days after they first air, rather than waiting months for a local network to broadcast them. Jacqueline Hurt, a lawyer specializing in media law, says, "Until now, the effect of the Internet on TV and film has been small because of the speed issues involved in downloading. But with the increased uptake of broadband, and if the quality was acceptable, then this could be a big issue for broadcasters and program-makers… The value of a program to broadcasters will go down if the program is readily available on the Internet." But broadcasters remain largely unaware of the threat. Yinka Adegoke, deputy editor of New Media Age magazine, says: "No one I know in the industry is aware of it and it is just not on the agenda… If this goes from being a niche activity to the mainstream it will be virtually impossible to stop. This is exactly what happened to the music industry. Once the genie is out of the bottle you can't put it back in." The range of shows available for downloading currently is focused on the most popular U.S. programs, such as "Friends" and "The West Wing," and programs with loyal fan bases, such as science fiction.

more @ BBC News.

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2003-05-08T02:05:00.000-03:00

Palm in Motion:
Wireless Connectivity
and Secure E-Mail

PalmSource, the software subsidiary of PDA market leader Palm, has forged an alliance with Research in Motion (RIM), maker of Blackberry devices, to make wireless data connectivity and secure e-mail available to Palm OS licensees. Palm has also cut a deal with RIM rival Good Technology, which will enable Palm to make available Good's
communications software and services on the Palm OS. The market for handhelds was down 20% in 2002, but PalmSource CEO David Nagel says a recent survey of 500 companies indicates that 90% of IT managers plan to spend as much as 15% more on IT this year than last year.

more @ CNet News.

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2003-05-08T01:20:00.000-03:00

Gates on Microsoft's
New Security System:
Use it or Don't it

Microsoft's Bill Gates thinks people should have no fears about the company's new hard-wired security technology -- but reminds them that they don't have to use it unless they want to: "This is a mechanism that if people want to use, for example, to protect medical records, they can use it. It's a lot of work to do this stuff, and we think consumers will want those privacy guarantees. If they don't want them, then fine, ask me about our other work.'' Chipmakers Intel and AMD are working on the hardware aspects of the technology, which will provide the creators or owners of digital content a very high level of control over that content, allowing it to be viewed only by trusted employees or paying customers, and locking out snoops and vandals. Microsoft is calling its technology "Next Generation Secure Computing Base."

more @ San Jose Mercury News.

received from NewScan Daily newslist. NewsScan Daily (FREE), a lively summary of information technology news writed by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas. To subscribe, send email to Newscan. Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.

2003-05-08T01:09:00.000-03:00

Google Reachs
3 Billion Web
Pages Instantly

Google, the world's most-used search engine, is now able to instantly search more than 3 billion Web pages about virtually any subject, and quantity has become quality: "Google is altering social and business habits -- from dating to hiring," in the words of one analyst. Journalist Stewart Alsop, who writes about technology, says: "I didn't used to need to do this, but now I can't work effectively without being able to 'Google' someone.'' Examples of Google's new importance: One in three Americans online has searched on the name of a personal acquaintance into a search engine, and one in four had done a "vanity Google'' (typing one's own name into the search box to see what comes up). But as its global dominance grows, more and more people have been questioning Google on issues such as fairness and privacy. ) O'Reilly & Co. president Tim O'Reilly, who publishes computer- and Internet-focused books, says: "There are a lot of people who certainly worry about a Google backlash, if it gets too powerful, and Lynn Wedel, a frequent Google user, worries: "There's too much information, and it's too easy to find. I didn't know all these things were in the databases.'' People often find that their marathon finish times, club memberships and high school reunion photos online, because a friend, family member or organization has posted the information. Ben Edelman, a fellow a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, warns: "They are, after all, free to do what they want to. But make no mistake about it, if people aren't happy, Google could face regulation. People will want to pass a law.''

more @ San Jose Mercury News.

received from NewScan Daily newslist. NewsScan Daily (FREE), a lively summary of information technology news writed by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas. To subscribe, send email to Newscan. Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.

2003-05-01T19:34:00.000-03:00

White House Fight to
Block the Release of
Official Report on 9/11

The Secrets of September 11

by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

The White House is battling to keep a report on the terror attacks secret. Does the 2004 election have anything to do with it?

Even as White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror attacks, administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the attacks.

At the center of the dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded the attacks -- including provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during the summer of 2001.

The report was completed last December; only a bare-bones list of "findings" with virtually no details was made public. But nearly six months later, a "working group" of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to review the document has taken a hard line against further public disclosure. By refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of this month, congressional and administration sources tell NEWSWEEK. In some cases, these sources say, the administration has even sought to "reclassify" some material that was already discussed in public testimony -- a move one Senate staffer described as "ludicrous." The administration's stand has infuriated the two members of Congress who oversaw the report -- Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss. The two are now preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Graham is "increasingly frustrated" by the administration's "unwillingness to release what he regards as important information the public should have about 9-11," a spokesman said. In Graham's view, the Bush administration isn't protecting legitimate issues of national security but information that could be a political "embarrassment," the aide said. Graham, who last year served as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, recently told NEWSWEEK: "There has been a cover-up of this."

Graham's stand may not be terribly surprising, given that the Florida Democrat is running for president and is seeking to use the issue himself politically. But he has found a strong ally in House Intelligence Committee Chairman Goss, a staunch Republican (and former CIA officer) who in the past has consistently defended the administration's handling of 9-11 issues and is considered especially close to Cheney.

"I find this process horrendously frustrating," Goss said in an interview. He was particularly piqued that the administration was refusing to declassify material that top intelligence officials had already testified about. "Senior intelligence officials said things in public hearings that they [administration officials] don't want us to put in the report," said Goss. "That's not something I can rationally accept without further public explanation."

Unlike Graham, Goss insists there are no political "gotchas" in the report, only a large volume of important information about the performance and shortcomings of U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies prior to September 11.

And even congressional staffers close to the process say it is unclear whether the administration’s resistance to public disclosure reflects fear of political damage or simply an ingrained "culture of secrecy" that permeates the intelligence community -- and has strong proponents at the highest levels of the White House.

The mammoth report reflects nearly 10 months of investigative work by a special staff hired jointly by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and overseen by Eleanor Hill, a former federal prosecutor and Pentagon inspector general. Hill's team got access to hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents from the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other executive-branch agencies. The staff also conducted scores of interviews with senior officials, field agents and intelligence officers. (They were not, however, given access to some top White House aides, such as national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice or other principals like Secretary of State Colin Powell or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.) The team's report was approved by the two intelligence committees last Dec. 10. But because the document relied so heavily on secret material, the administration "working group," overseen by CIA director George Tenet, had to first "scrub" the document and determine which portions could be declassified.

More than two months later, the working group came back with its decisions -- and some members were flabbergasted. Entire portions remained classified. Some of the report -- including some dealing with matters that had been extensively aired in public, such as the now famous FBI "Phoenix memo" of July 2001 reporting that Middle Eastern nationals might be enrolling in U.S. flight schools -- were "reclassified." Hill has since submitted proposed changes to the working group, pointing out the illogic of trying to pull back material that was already in the public domain. But officials have indicated the "review" process is likely to drag on for months -- with no guarantees that the "working group" will be any more amenable to public disclosure.

A U.S. intelligence official cited international distractions as at least one reason for the delays. "In case you hadn't noticed, there have been two wars going on," the official said. The official added: "We're working this [report] to try to get it out without putting lives at risk and without endangering sources and methods." Asked why the working group was refusing to permit disclosure of material that had already been made public, the official said: "Just because something had been inadvertently released, doesn't make it unclassified."

The administration’s tough stand, some sources say, doesn't augur well for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks -- which is conducting its own investigation into the events of 9-11. Already, flaps have developed on that front, as well. When one commissioner, former congressman Tim Roemer, last week sought to review transcripts of some of the joint inquiry's closed-door hearings, he was denied access -- because the commission staff had agreed to a White House request to allow its lawyers to first review the material to determine if the president wants to invoke executive privilege to keep the material out of the panel's hands.

"I think it's outrageous," says Roemer, who plans to raise the matter at a commission hearing this week. But a commission staffer says he expected the White House review to be finished by the end of the week, and it was unclear whether the president's lawyers would try to invoke executive privilege -- a stand that would almost certainly provoke a major legal battle with the panel.

The tensions over the release of 9-11 related material seems especially relevant -- if not ironic -- in light of recent reports that the president’s political advisers have devised an unusual re-election strategy that essentially uses the story of September 11 as the liftoff for his campaign. The White House is delaying the Republican nominating convention, scheduled for New York City, until the first week in September 2004 -- the latest in the party's history. That would allow Bush's acceptance speech, now slated for Sept. 2, to meld seamlessly into 9-11 commemoration events due to take place in the city the next week.

Some sources who have read the still-secret congressional report say some sections would not play quite so neatly into White House plans. One portion deals extensively with the stream of U.S. intelligence-agency reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning an upcoming attack against the United States -- and implicitly raises questions about how Bush and his top aides responded. One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike "in the coming weeks," the congressional investigators found. The intelligence briefing went on to say: "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."

The substance of that intelligence report was first disclosed at a public hearing last September by staff director Hill. But at the last minute, Hill was blocked from saying precisely who within the Bush White House got the briefing when CIA director Tenet classified the names of the recipients. (One source says the recipients of the briefing included Bush himself.) As a result, Hill was only able to say the briefing was given to "senior government officials."

more @ Newsweek.

2003-05-01T17:53:00.000-03:00

Experiencing the Taste
of Patriot Act
in the Dinner

Patriot Raid

by Jason Halperin

Two weeks ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of civil liberties in times of war.

That night, March 20th, my roommate Asher and I were on our way to see the Broadway show "Rent." We had an hour to spare before curtain time so we stopped into an Indian restaurant just off of Times Square in the heart of midtown. I have omitted the name of the restaurant so as not to subject the owners to any further harassment or humiliation.

We helped ourselves to the buffet and then sat down to begin eating our dinner. I was just about to tell Asher how I'd eaten there before and how delicious the vegetable curry was, but I never got a chance. All of a sudden, there was a terrible commotion and five NYPD in bulletproof vests stormed down the stairs. They had their guns drawn and were pointing them indiscriminately at the restaurant staff and at us.

"Go to the back, go to the back of the restaurant," they yelled.

I hesitated, lost in my own panic.

"Did you not hear me, go to the back and sit down," they demanded.

I complied and looked around at the other patrons. There were eight men including the waiter, all of South Asian descent and ranging in age from late-teens to senior citizen. One of the policemen pointed his gun point-blank in the face of the waiter and shouted: "Is there anyone else in the restaurant?" The waiter, terrified, gestured to the kitchen.

The police placed their fingers on the triggers of their guns and kicked open the kitchen doors. Shouts emanated from the kitchen and a few seconds later five Hispanic men were made to crawl out on their hands and knees, guns pointed at them.

After patting us all down, the five officers seated us at two tables. As they continued to kick open doors to closets and bathrooms with their fingers glued to their triggers, no less than ten officers in suits emerged from the stairwell. Most of them sat in the back of the restaurant typing on their laptop computers. Two of them walked over to our table and identified themselves as officers of the INS and Homeland Security Department.

I explained that we were just eating dinner and asked why we were being held. We were told by the INS agent that we would be released once they had confirmation that we had no outstanding warrants and our immigration status was OK'd.

In pre-9/11 America, the legality of this would have been questionable. After all, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized."

"You have no right to hold us," Asher insisted.

"Yes, we have every right," responded one of the agents. "You are being held under the Patriot Act following suspicion under an internal Homeland Security investigation."

more @ AlterNet.

received from AlterNet Headlines newslist, brief summaries of leading stories from AlterNet -- the independent news and syndication service.

2003-05-01T17:38:00.000-03:00

Iraq's War is
the Bush's Message
for the World

Reason for War? "Global Show of U.S. Power and Democracy"

by John Cochran

White House Officials Say Privately the Sept. 11 Attacks Changed Everything

To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy.

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.

"We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."

Officials now say they may not find hundreds of tons of mustard and nerve agents and maybe not thousands of liters of anthrax and other toxins. But U.S. forces will find some, they say. On Thursday, President Bush raised the possibility for the first time that any such Iraqi weapons were destroyed before or during the war.

If weapons of mass destruction were not the primary reason for war, what was? Here's the answer officials and advisers gave ABCNEWS.

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks changed everything, including the Bush administration's thinking about the Middle East — and not just Saddam Hussein.

Senior officials decided that unless action was taken, the Middle East would continue to be a breeding ground for terrorists. Officials feared that young Arabs, angry about their lives and without hope, would always looking for someone to hate — and that someone would always be Israel and the United States.

Europeans thought the solution was to get a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. But American officials felt a Middle East peace agreement would only be part of the solution.

The Bush administration felt that a new start was needed in the Middle East and that Iraq was the place to show that it is democracy -- not terrorism -- that offers hope.

Sending a Message

Beyond that, the Bush administration decided it must flex muscle to show it would fight terrorism, not just here at home and not just in Afghanistan against the Taliban, but in the Middle East, where it was thriving.

Officials deny that Bush was captured by the aggressive views of neo-conservatives. But Bush did agree with some of their thinking.

"We made it very public that we thought that one consequence the president should draw from 9/11 is that it was unacceptable to sit back and let either terrorist groups or dictators developing weapons of mass destruction strike first at us," conservative commentator Bill Kristol said on ABCNEWS' Nightline in March.

The Bush administration wanted to make a statement about its determination to fight terrorism. And officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target.

Other countries have such weapons, yet the United States did not go to war with them. And though Saddam oppressed and tortured his own people, other tyrants have done the same without incurring U.S. military action. Finally, Saddam had ties to terrorists -- but so have several countries that the United States did not fight.

But Saddam was guilty of all these things and he met another requirement as well -- a prime location, in the heart of the Middle East, between Syria and Iran, two countries the United States wanted to send a message to.

That message: If you collaborate with terrorists, you do so at your own peril.

Officials said that even if Saddam had backed down and avoided war by admitting to having weapons of mass destruction, the world would have received the same message; Don't mess with the United States.

< my comment > What a lovely message! It was a wonderfull experience had received it. Now we know how U.S. government spell the word "post". The way was used to make the message goes don't "missil" anyone. I only wasn't very sure about what was said: it was "it is democracy -- not terrorism -- that offers hope", or "don't mess with the United States"? Beyond the doubts the amazing message comes to all in the same "scumbag" box office. < /comment >

more @ ABC News.

2003-05-01T16:27:00.000-03:00

Attackers Pitch
Grenades to Avenge
Wednesday Deaths

Grenade Injures 7 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq

by Charles J. Hanley

Attackers lobbed two grenades into a U.S. Army compound Thursday, wounding seven soldiers just hours after the Americans had fired on Iraqi protesters in the street outside, a U.S. intelligence officer reported.

The incident - the latest in a series of clashes and deadly shootings involving U.S. troops in Fallujah - came as President Bush prepared to address to the American public from a homeward-bound aircraft carrier, declaring that major combat in Iraq is finished.

None of the injuries to soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Fallujah was life-threatening, said Capt. Frank Rosenblatt.

The troops inside the walled compound - a former police station - opened fire on men fleeing the area, but no one was captured or believed hit, said Rosenblatt, whose 82nd Airborne Division is handing over control of Fallujah to the Armored Cavalry. Officers said the attackers' identities were unknown.

The attack, at 1 a.m. Thursday, came after soldiers in the compound and in a passing Army convoy opened fire Wednesday on anti-American demonstrators massed outside. Local hospital officials said two Iraqis were killed and 18 wounded.

American officers said that barrage was provoked when someone fired on the convoy from the crowd.

Wednesday's march was to protest earlier bloodshed Monday night, when 16 demonstrators and bystanders were killed and more than 50 wounded, according to hospital counts. In that clash, an 82nd Airborne company, whose members said they were being shot at, fired on a protest outside a school occupied by U.S. soldiers.

Some Fallujah residents said they had heard relatives of victims vow to avenge Wednesday's shootings - and many in the city have declared they want the American troops to leave.

more @ Associated Press News.

founded @ Daily Kos. Daily Kos: political analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

2003-05-01T15:38:00.000-03:00

Taking the Country
to War on the
Wings of a Lie

Epilogue: A Question of Truth

by Christopher Allbritton

After a week back, I’ve managed to get some sleep in, say “hey” to a few friends, put up some picture pages (part one and part two) and try to take stock of the aftermath of this war. This is difficult, however, as the urban environment of New York City is so alien to the experiences of the past month that it might as well be a different planet. It doesn’t help that I’m still stepping gingerly around the East Village (residual fear of landmines), looking for sniper positions on the skyscrapers and marveling that people aren’t all carrying AK-47s.

But that’s nothing compared to what the Iraqi people have had to go through, and what they’re facing. To a certain degree, the same goes for the people of America who, it may be, were lied to about the reasons for this war.

According to the Independent in the U.K., the Bush White House based its case for invading Iraq on a “selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication.” The weapons of mass destruction that were said to have posed an imminent threat to the United States and the free world have yet to be found, although Bush promises they will be. Again, the Times reported April 27:

In northern Iraq, a military chemical-analysis team said today that a cache of barrels and two mobile laboratories found near the village of Bayji were most likely not used for chemical warfare purposes, countering earlier reports from an Army officer at the site.

For New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, this is no biggie. “We do not need to find any weapons of mass destruction to justify this war,” he wrote this weekend. “That skull, and the thousands more that will be unearthed, are enough for me.” He was referring to a graphic and affecting photo the Times ran on its front page on Friday. This is the same man who wrote on Feb. 19:

I am also very troubled by the way Bush officials have tried to justify this war on the grounds that Saddam is allied with Osama bin Laden or will be soon. There is simply no proof of that, and every time I hear them repeat it I think of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. You don’t take the country to war on the wings of a lie. (Emphasis added.)

Friedman wasn’t talking so much about WMD in that earlier column, but the point remains the same. In matters of starting wars, you better have the moral high ground, and you don’t get there by climbing a ladder of falsehoods.

For people wholly supportive of the war, however, the tonic of triumphalism is sweet indeed. Many are now saying “I told you so” to those of us who opposed it. A reader — I can’t find the email now — asked some months ago if I would change my mind on the war if it was proven that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. I answered that no, I wouldn’t, since I didn’t — and don’t — believe that the war was about WMD or an evil tyrant but about realpolitik plans for projecting American power into the Middle East. My response to this reader is to flip the question: “Do you still think this war was necessary since it may very well turn out that there are no WMD to be found?”

(Mind you, I’m sure the U.S. will find some cache of chemicals or a few warheads, but President Bush repeatedly invoked a clear and present danger to the survival of the United States as a justification for war. A few dozen litres of mustard gas or even VX does not strike me as justification for shredding the U.N. Charter, demolishing NATO, harming further the United States’ image abroad and increasing the risk of terrorism at home.)

Still, some very real good occurred from the toppling of Saddam. There is no doubt the future of Iraq will be much, much brighter without him. The war was prosecuted fairly well with relatively low civilian casualties, there was no urban warfare and at least some Iraqis in the Arab parts of the country cheered the U.S’s entry into Baghdad. (The Kurds were, naturally, ecstatic, but the warm welcome I received should not be taken as indicative of the mood of the country as a whole. Many, many Arabs are angry over what happened to their country and the Kurds are ready to bolt from Iraq if they get the chance.) But the aftermath of the war could be more damaging to American interests and the Iraqi people. U.S. soldiers today fired into a crowd of civilian protesters at Falluhaj, about 30 miles west of Baghdad. The director of the local hospital said 13 people were killed and 75 injured. This is the third such incident such as this, with the other two occurring in Mosul.

Trigger-happy troops, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s cavalier attitude toward the rape of a nation’s cultural history — with journalists and soldiers taking part — as well as disturbing but totally unconfirmed stories I was told by troops about atrocities committed by U.S. forces against prisoners all point to one thing: the need for a skeptical and close examination of America’s role in a post-war Iraq.

This examination is not going to come from the networks, obviously. CNN’s news head Eason Jordan, already facing criticism for the arguably morally bankrupt policy of not reporting Saddam’s thuggery in exchange for 12 years of access, revealed to Howard Kurtz on “Reliable Sources” last week that the retired military personnel used on air were all approved by the Pentagon! (L.A. Times, registration req.) “I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance, at CNN, ‘Here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war,’” he said. “And we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important.” Cozy arrangement, there.

By and large, the television reports were uniformly awful, in my opinion, with a rah-rah patriotism that television excels at. Print reporters were better, however, with critical reports and unfiltered quotes from troops, including New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins quoting a sergeant as saying he shot an Iraqi woman because “the chick got in the way.”

This criticism is not to take away from the courage of the reporters in the field. I was a chicken and mainly stayed away from the rough stuff so I don’t include myself in that previous sentence. Twelve journalists died in this war, out of about 1,500 covering it. None of those 12 people had to be there; they chose to be there. Their motivations, I’m sure, ranged from the noble dedication to the story and the people of Iraq to the base lust for glory and a collection of war stories. Most likely it was a combination of both. I am including myself here and speaking from personal experience.

So what comes next? For Iraq, no one knows. President Bush says the U.S. will install democracy but that doesn’t include a Shi’a-led Islamic state — a wise choice, even if it does leave the United States open to hypocrisy. We’ll see to what degree democracy really does come to the new Iraq. But I know this: The American people, in whose name this war was waged, need to hold this administration’s feet to the fire. It’s obviously too late to stop this war, but we as a democratic nation still have a responsibility to make the aftermath as beneficial to the Iraqi people as possible now that it’s over. That means that corporate cronyism that seems to be the preferred method for awarding lucrative rebuilding contracts needs to be protested — loudly. Any backsliding on democratic actions or a disconnect between administration actions and rhetoric have to be combatted as vigorously possible.

The anti-war crowd would be criminally irresponsible if it just washes its hands of the matter and considers the battle to halt military action in Iraq a failed cause and moves onto the next cause celebre. And if the pro-war people think they now have a right to say, “We told you this war would go well,” they damn well also have a responsibility to hold the people they supported to their word. It’s time for them, the “winners” in the “Should we go to war or shouldn’t we?” debate, to put up or shut up.

I personally don’t plan on sitting back and letting things just happen, on letting Iraq slip from the consciousness of an easily distracted people. I’m working on a book proposal examining the three acts of this drama — build up, the war itself and its aftermath. I’ll be returning to Iraq as soon as possible to research the rebuilding and to explore those disturbing stories I heard. Most important, I’ll be keeping the voices of the Iraqi people front and center, something the mainstream media tend not to do.

more @ Back in Iraq 2.0, the Allbritton's coalition warblog.

2003-05-01T14:34:00.000-03:00

@-}----{>Phrase of the Week<}----{-@

"And when you look at the way war critics -- from the Dixie Chicks to Tom Daschle -- have been savaged by conservatives, it feels as if some people want to use this war to create a multiparty democracy in Iraq and a one-party state in America."

Thomas L. Friedman

more @ New York Times.

2003-05-01T13:34:00.000-03:00

U.S. soldier in Afghanistan by Albritton

Revealed: How
the Road to War
Was Paved with Lies

by Raymond Whitaker

Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war

The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. "They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat," the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East newspaper which said, "Washington has to prove its case. If it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved the road to war with lies", he added: "You can draw your own conclusions."

UN inspectors who left Iraq just before the war started were searching for four categories of weapons: nuclear, chemical, biological and missiles capable of flying beyond a range of 93 miles. They found ample evidence that Iraq was not co-operating, but none to support British and American assertions that Saddam Hussein's regime posed an imminent threat to the world.

On nuclear weapons, the British Government claimed that the former regime sought uranium feed material from the government of Niger in west Africa. This was based on letters later described by the International Atomic Energy Agency as crude forgeries.

On chemical weapons, a CIA report on the likelihood that Saddam would use weapons of mass destruction was partially declassified. The parts released were those which made it appear that the danger was high; only after pressure from Senator Bob Graham, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was the whole report declassified, including the conclusion that the chances of Iraq using chemical weapons were "very low" for the "foreseeable future".

On biological weapons, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, told the UN Security Council in February that the former regime had up to 18 mobile laboratories. He attributed the information to "defectors" from Iraq, without saying that their claims – including one of a "secret biological laboratory beneath the Saddam Hussein hospital in central Baghdad" – had repeatedly been disproved by UN weapons inspectors.

On missiles, Iraq accepted UN demands to destroy its al-Samoud weapons, despite disputing claims that they exceeded the permitted range. No banned Scud missiles were found before or since, but last week the Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, suggested Scuds had been fired during the war. There is no proof any were in fact Scuds.

Some American officials have all but conceded that the weapons of mass destruction campaign was simply a means to an end – a "global show of American power and democracy", as ABC News in the US put it. "We were not lying," it was told by one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis." American and British teams claim they are scouring Iraq in search of definitive evidence but none has so far been found, even though the sites considered most promising have been searched, and senior figures such as Tariq Aziz, the former Deputy Prime Minister, intelligence chiefs and the man believed to be in charge of Iraq's chemical weapons programme are in custody.

Robin Cook, who as Foreign Secretary would have received high-level security briefings, said last week that "it was difficult to believe that Saddam had the capacity to hit us". Mr Cook resigned from the Government on the eve of war, but was still in the Cabinet as Leader of the House when it released highly contentious dossiers to bolster its case.

One report released last autumn by Tony Blair said that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes, but last week Mr Hoon said that such weapons might have escaped detection because they had been dismantled and buried. A later Downing Street "intelligence" dossier was shown to have been largely plagiarised from three articles in academic publications. "You cannot just cherry-pick evidence that suits your case and ignore the rest. It is a cardinal rule of intelligence," said one aggrieved officer. "Yet that is what the PM is doing." Another said: "What we have is a few strands of highly circumstantial evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being presented as a cast-iron case. That really is not good enough."

Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge University analyst who first pointed out Downing Street's plagiarism, said ministers had claimed before the war to have information which could not be disclosed because agents in Iraq would be endangered. "That doesn't apply any more, but they haven't come up with the evidence," he said. "They lack credibility."

Mr Rangwala said much of the information on WMDs had come from Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC), which received Pentagon money for intelligence-gathering. "The INC saw the demand, and provided what was needed," he said. "The implication is that they polluted the whole US intelligence effort."

Facing calls for proof of their allegations, senior members of both the US and British governments are suggesting that so-called WMDs were destroyed after the departure of UN inspectors on the eve of war – a possibility raised by President George Bush for the first time on Thursday.

This in itself, however, appears to be an example of what the chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix called "shaky intelligence". An Iraqi scientist, writing under a pseudonym, said in a note slipped to a driver in a US convoy that he had proof information was kept from the inspectors, and that Iraqi officials had destroyed chemical weapons just before the war.

more @ The Independent.

founded @ Back In Iraq 2.0, the Albritton's coalition warblog.

2003-04-30T02:36:00.000-03:00

U.S. Troops Kill 13
Iraqi Protesters in a
Peaceful Demonstration

U.S. troops shot dead 13 Iraqis and wounded dozens taking part in a demonstration west of Baghdad, witnesses said on Tuesday -- an incident sure to inflame anger and fuel anti-American sentiment.

U.S. military officials said the soldiers opened fire on a crowd of Iraqi demonstrators late on Monday in Falluja, 30 miles outside Baghdad, but witnesses told Reuters the protesters were unarmed. [...]

In Falluja, hospital director Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali said 13 people had been killed and at least 75 wounded in Monday's shooting. There were widely conflicting accounts of what had happened, but protesting Iraqis were demanding that U.S. troops leave a local school they were using as a barracks.

U.S. Lt. Christopher Hart said between 100 and 200 chanting people approached his men, who opened fire after two gunmen with rifles appeared on a motorcycle and started shooting. He put the Iraqi death toll at between seven and 10.

"Our soul and our blood we will sacrifice to you martyrs," mourners in Falluja chanted as they buried their dead at a cemetery while U.S. helicopters flew overhead.

"It was a peaceful demonstration. They did not have any weapons," said local Sunni Muslim cleric Kamal Shaker Mahmoud.

A U.S. officer at the scene, Lt. Col. Eric Nantz, said the bloodshed occurred after people in the crowd fired into the air, making it hard to tell if his men were under threat.

"There was a lot of celebratory firing ... last night," Nantz said, noting Monday was Saddam's 66th birthday.

"There were a lot of people who were armed and who were throwing rocks. How is a U.S. soldier to tell the difference between a rock and a grenade?"

It was the third deadly shooting incident between Iraqis and U.S. troops in the past two weeks, fueling resentment and anger at the Americans' continuing presence in Iraq after toppling Saddam.

In the northern city of Mosul, 10 Iraqis were killed when U.S. Marines opened fire on protesters earlier this month, although again the Americans said they were only returning fire.

U.S. officers seeking to restore order in the aftermath of Saddam's fall said 3,000 to 4,000 extra troops and military police would go to Baghdad in the next 10 days to boost security in the capital.

more @ Reuters.

2003-04-30T02:22:00.000-03:00

Apple Launches
PPD 99 Cents
Songs' Service

Jobs: "We Believe in the Future of Music"

Apple Computer launched its iTunes Music Store on Monday in a move that CEO Steve Jobs called "a major milestone in the evolution of the real digital music age. We believe in the future of music." iTunes offers 200,000 downloadable songs for 99 cents apiece and is the first industry-endorsed online music service to forgo subscription fees in favor of a "pay-per-download" business model. Jobs said the real draw for music fans will be the easy-to-use interface and high-quality files available at the iTunes Music Store. "Using current piracy services is very frustrating. It takes you 15 minutes to find and download a song of reasonable quality that doesn't have the last four seconds cut off or a break in the middle. We offer super-fast, high-quality downloads with pristine encoding. You certainly can't get that on any other service -- pirate or legal."

more @ Los Angeles Times.

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2003-04-29T03:10:00.000-03:00

Torvalds:
"DRM is Perfectly OK
with Linux"

From: Linus Torvalds

Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 20:59:45 -0700 (PDT)

To: Kernel Mailing List

Subject: Flame Linus to a crisp!

Ok,

there's no way to do this gracefully, so I won't even try. I'm going to just hunker down for some really impressive extended flaming, and my asbestos underwear is firmly in place, and extremely uncomfortable.

I want to make it clear that DRM is perfectly ok with Linux!

There, I've said it. I'm out of the closet. So bring it on...

I've had some private discussions with various people about this already, and I do realize that a lot of people want to use the kernel in some way to just make DRM go away, at least as far as Linux is concerned. Either by some policy decision or by extending the GPL to just not allow it.

In some ways the discussion was very similar to some of the software patent related GPL-NG discussions from a year or so ago: "we don't like it, and we should change the license to make it not work somehow".

And like the software patent issue, I also don't necessarily like DRM myself, but I still ended up feeling the same: I'm an "Oppenheimer", and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to - which very much includes things I don't necessarily personally approve of.

The GPL requires you to give out sources to the kernel, but it doesn't limit what you can _do_ with the kernel. On the whole, this is just another example of why rms calls me "just an engineer" and thinks I have no ideals.

[ Personally, I see it as a virtue - trying to make the world a slightly better place _without_ trying to impose your moral values on other people. You do whatever the h*ll rings your bell, I'm just an engineer who wants to make the best OS possible. ]

In short, it's perfectly ok to sign a kernel image - I do it myself indirectly every day through the kernel.org, as kernel.org will sign the tar-balls I upload to make sure people can at least verify that they came that way. Doing the same thing on the binary is no different: signing a binary is a perfectly fine way to show the world that you're the one behind it, and that _you_ trust it.

And since I can imaging signing binaries myself, I don't feel that I can disallow anybody else doing so.

Another part of the DRM discussion is the fact that signing is only the first step: _acting_ on the fact whether a binary is signed or not (by refusing to load it, for example, or by refusing to give it a secret key) is required too.

But since the signature is pointless unless you _use_ it for something, and since the decision how to use the signature is clearly outside of the scope of the kernel itself (and thus not a "derived work" or anything like that), I have to convince myself that not only is it clearly ok to act on the knowledge of whather the kernel is signed or not, it's also outside of the scope of what the GPL talks about, and thus irrelevant to the license.

That's the short and sweet of it. I wanted to bring this out in the open, because I know there are people who think that signed binaries are an act of "subversion" (or "perversion") of the GPL, and I wanted to make sure that people don't live under mis-apprehension that it can't be done.

I think there are many quite valid reasons to sign (and verify) your kernel images, and while some of the uses of signing are odious, I don't see any sane way to distinguish between "good" signers and "bad" signers.

Comments? I'd love to get some real discussion about this, but in the end I'm personally convinced that we have to allow it.

Btw, one thing that is clearly _not_ allowed by the GPL is hiding private keys in the binary. You can sign the binary that is a result of the build process, but you can _not_ make a binary that is aware of certain keys without making those keys public - because those keys will obviously have been part of the kernel build itself.

So don't get these two things confused - one is an external key that is applied _to_ the kernel (ok, and outside the license), and the other one is embedding a key _into_ the kernel (still ok, but the GPL requires that such a key has to be made available as "source" to the kernel).

Linus

more @ Linux Today.

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2003-04-29T02:07:00.000-03:00

Nineteen Jailed
Because Publish DTV
Cards Design Secrets

Student Confesses to Violation of Trade Secret Law

University of Chicago student Igor Serebreyany is pleading guilty to charges of putting secret documents about DirecTV's anti-piracy technology on the Internet, in violation of the federal Economic Espionage Act of 1996, which prohibits anyone from disclosing trade secrets for economic benefit. He theoretically faces penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but has negotiated a deal under which his prison sentence would be no more than one year. The documents described details about the design and architecture of DirectTV cards.

more @ Contra Costa Times.

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2003-04-29T00:55:00.000-03:00

Movie Studios and
Record Labels Only
Idea: Sue them All

Ruling Forces Entertainment Industry to Rethink Strategy

Friday's ruling exonerating Grokster and StreamCast of charges of violating copyright laws will force the entertainment industry to broaden its battle against Internet piracy on three fronts: the courts, in Congress and in the marketplace. In addition to appealing the most recent ruling, the movie studios and record labels may start suing individuals who trade copyrighted files. One music label president, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says the ruling leaves industry no choice: "It makes them [consumers] angrier, but we have no other path right now. It's ridiculous what we're doing, but we have so few options." The industry is also lobbying Congress for stricter anti-piracy laws, and at the same time must find a way to give consumers a compelling alternative to piracy: "The most effective way to combat unlicensed sites is to offer licensed services with reasonable consumer rules at attractive prices," says a digital media analyst at Raymond James. "This attempt to enforce prohibition is a failure." The fact that many of the illegitimate sites are polluted with viruses, pop-up ads and low-quality files creates an opportunity for industry to offer a high-quality, hassle-free online service, he adds.

more @ Los Angeles Times.

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2003-04-29T00:14:00.000-03:00

MPAA and RIAA Defeated
on Federal Demands to
Illegalize P2P Software

Grokster and Streamcast: we Didn't Do it

A federal judge has ruled that two Internet music services that offer peer-to-peer software used by millions of people to share copyrighted music illegally are not themselves guilty of copyright infringement. The judge's reasoning was that, since the technology is also used for many perfectly legal purposes, the two services should not be held responsible in those cases when it happens to be used for illegal purposes. The ruling will be appealed. The music industry insists that the two services, Grokster and StreamCast, are overwhelmingly used by people to exchange copyrighted material, and that legal uses are insignificant. Many industry analysts predict that the industry will soon have to change fundamentally and begin providing inexpensive, easy-to-access music over the Internet.

Much of Wilson's ruling hung on the technological differences between Napster and the newer, decentralized file-swapping services.

Napster's service opened itself to liability for its users' actions by actively playing a role in connecting people who were downloading and uploading songs--a little like a physical swap meet provides the facilities for people exchanging illegal material, the judge said. By contrast, Grokster and Streamcast distributed software to people and had no control over what their users did afterwards, Wilson said.

When users search for and initiate transfers of files using the Grokster client, they do so without any information being transmitted to or through any computers owned or controlled by Grokster," Wilson wrote. "Neither Grokster nor StreamCast provides the site and facilities" for direct infringement. "If either defendant closed their doors and deactivated all computers within their control, users of their products could continue sharing files with little or no interruption."

It didn't matter that the companies were aware generally of copyright infringement happening using their software, Wilson added--they would have to know of specific instances of infringement and be able to do something about it, to be liable for those users' actions.

Friday's decision is likely to send shock waves throughout the copyright and technology communities, which have adjusted slowly over the last year to the notion that file-trading services such as these were mostly likely illegal. Technology companies have complained that the repeated lawsuits have stifled innovation, but many also have begun to move forward in alliances with authorized music--and film-distribution services.

more @ New York Times and CNet News, read also the summary judgement @ Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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2003-04-29T00:02:00.000-03:00

Providers Will Change
E-Mail Router to
Track True Sender

ISP Heavyweights Tackle Spam

America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo are joining together in an effort to vanquish spam, and are calling for technical changes in the way that e-mail is routed through cyberspace to make it easier to identify the true sender and content of messages. "We are talking about working on ways to change the dynamics of the e-mail system to make it easier to determine what is fraudulent," says MSN VP Brian Arbogast. The companies say they haven't yet discussed exactly what the standards should be, but have agreed they want to include other competitors in their discussions. "Working together, we will have better information about who are the kingpins that are sending the largest volume of spam to our users," says an AOL spokesman.

more @ New York Times.

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2003-04-28T23:54:00.000-03:00

Logfren-Lessig's Law
Identify Commercial
E-Mail as Advertising

A Bounty on the Head of Spammers

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren plans to introduce legislation drafted by Stanford law professor Larry Lessig that would require unsolicited commercial e-mails ("spam") to be identified as advertising and would put a bounty on anyone who breaks that law, by offering rewards of thousands of dollars or more to the person who is first to provide the government with proof and the identity of offending spammers. Lessig is so confident his war on spam will be effective that he's promising to quit his Stanford job if the bill becomes law and "does not substantially reduce the level of spam.''

more @ San Jose Mercury News.

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2003-04-27T19:55:00.000-03:00

BBC DG attacks U.S.
Media Networks
for Coverage of War

Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, attacked American television and radio networks for their "shocking" and "gung-ho" coverage of the Iraq conflict yesterday. He also issued a warning against US companies being allowed greater ownership of British media.

Mr Dyke said that changes to legislation proposed by the Government would allow American media companies to take a greater share of British television and radio, which could lead to a loss of impartiality in news coverage.

"We must ensure that we don't become Americanised," he said. Mr Dyke also accused the Government of trying to "manage public opinion" and "apply pressure" on the BBC.

In his first public comments since the war, Mr Dyke said America had "no news operation strong enough or brave enough to stand up against" the White House and Pentagon. He said: "Personally, I was shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during this war."

Mr Dyke said that since the 11 September terrorist attacks, many American networks had "wrapped themselves in the American flag and swapped impartiality for patriotism"

more @ The Independent.

2003-04-27T19:40:00.000-03:00

Chronicle Fires Reporter
Arrested in an
Anti-War Demonstration

A San Francisco Chronicle reporter who was arrested while participating in an anti-war demonstration last month said he has been fired for falsifying his timesheet.

Henry Norr, who covered technology and wrote a weekly column for the Chronicle, said he was fired on Monday.

Norr was suspended without pay after his arrest. The day before the March 20 demonstration, Norr said he sent an e-mail to his supervisor that said he planned to participate and expected to be arrested.

Norr said he took sick leave for the day of work missed, which the Chronicle determined was a falsification. Norr is contesting the termination through his union, the Northern California Media Workers/Newspaper Guild.

"I was sick. I was heartsick. I was nauseated and I was depressed by the lies, arrogance and manipulation," he said.

Joe Brown, a Chronicle spokesman, said the paper could not comment on pending personnel issues.

On April 2, the paper's top editors sent an e-mail clarifying its policy on staff participation in political activity. The e-mail, citing "our responsibility as journalists," said newsroom staffers were prohibited from participating in public political activity related to the war.

Previously, the policy said that staff members who become involved in a political cause should be careful not to create the appearance of a conflict of interest.

more @ Kansas City Star.

2003-04-27T19:14:00.000-03:00

The Worst
in Journalism
Goes to Murdoch

A Media Empire's Injustices

by Richard Cohen

Since 1917 the Pulitzer Prizes -- named for their creator, the 19th-century press baron Joseph Pulitzer -- have been awarded to encourage excellence in journalism. I happen to think that more could be accomplished with a prize for the worst in journalism. It should be called the Murdoch.

The first Murdoch would go to Rupert Murdoch himself, a media mogul who has single-handedly lowered the standards of journalism wherever he has gone. His New York Post and his Fox News Channel are blatantly political, hardly confining Murdoch's conservative political ideology to editorials or commentary but infusing it into the news coverage itself. It does this, of course, while insisting it does nothing of the sort.

The most repellent of Murdoch's products is the New York Post. (Full disclosure: My syndicated column appears in the competing New York Daily News.) The Post was the paper that, in the name of Americanism, called for a boycott of entertainment figures who opposed the war in Iraq. Under the headline "DON'T AID THESE SADDAM LOVERS," the paper's Page Six column on March 19 listed "appeasement-loving celebs." Among them were Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover. In some cases, the Post called for a boycott of their movies, never mind who else was in the movies or worked on them.

This is hardly Americanism. In the first place, none of the celebrities can fairly be called a "Saddam lover." They merely opposed the war. Second, they were not appeasers because, as the Bush administration itself said, this was a war of choice, not self-defense. Finally, dissent should be encouraged, not punished. This is how we learn. This is how we conduct a debate.

But the Murdoch way of conducting a debate is to yell treason or something very close to that. His organization did so, for instance, in a New York Post column that virtually called Peter Arnett, the former MSNBC correspondent, a traitor for what he said in his now-infamous interview with Iraqi state television. Arnett made himself impossible to defend, but bad judgment or even craven obsequiousness to a source (the Iraqis) is not treason. It is merely bad journalism.

The Fox News Channel thought otherwise. In a promotional spot, it said of Arnett: "He spoke out against America's armed forces; he said America's war against terrorism had failed; he even vilified America's leadership. And he worked for MSNBC."

Only the last sentence is true. The rest is such a stretch, such an exaggeration, that it amounts to a lie. Arnett never mentioned the "war against terrorism" and he never "vilified America's leadership." He was critical of the Bush administration -- but so was I on occasion, and I supported the war.

No single column could do justice to the injustices of the Murdoch empire -- or to its strange omissions. It went after Arnett with a vengeance but barely mentioned that its own reporter, that burlesque of a journalist, Geraldo Rivera, was given the boot by the military for essentially reporting the position of the unit he was with at the time. Must have been a busy news day.

It would be fun to imagine how the Murdoch press would cover Murdoch. It might have noticed that he abandoned his Australian citizenship and embraced America, apparently to comply with an FCC rule that prohibited foreigners from owning more than 25 percent of a TV license -- a touching immigrant saga. He dropped the BBC from his Star TV satellite operation in China because Beijing had a problem with its unbiased reporting. The New York Post and Fox might call him what they repeatedly called the French and others -- a "weasel." Alas, that would be editorializing.

more @ Washington Post.

2003-04-27T18:33:00.000-03:00

Military robots
to get
swarm intelligence

A battalion of 120 military robots is to be fitted with swarm intelligence software to enable them to mimic the organised behaviour of insects.

The project, which received funding this week from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is aimed at developing ways to perform missions such as minesweeping and search and rescue with minimum intervention from human operators.

The project is run by US software company Icosystems, which specialises in creating programs that mimic behaviours found in nature. Their software will use simple rules to co-ordinate complex behaviour among the robots.

"We will be addressing some fundamental questions about control strategies for robotic swarms," says Paolo Gaudiano, vice president of technology for Icosystems.

The robots' behaviour has been modelled in a computer environment by Icosystems but the company will now be able to test different approaches in the real world. The 120 robots were built for the US military by I-Robot, a company co-founded by robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks.

more @ New Scientist.

2003-04-27T18:29:00.000-03:00

U.S. Develops
Shocking Non-Lethal Mine
to Zap Intruders

From the country that brought us the atom bomb, the cluster bomb and the so-called mother of all bombs comes the "non-lethal" landmine - a nasty little critter that can fire 12 pairs of darts independently at different targets, with a battery capable of delivering up to 200 three-second shocks of 50,000 volts.

According to New Scientist, the United States is interested in developing this variation on the landmine that would zap intruders with an electric shock.

An Arizona company, Tasertron, has already carried out feasibility studies for the Pentagon, the British weekly says in next Saturday's issue.

The system would be based on a prototype gadget, the Taser Area Denial Device (TADD), which in turn is designed on the Taser, an electric shock gun widely used by police forces around the world.

TADD fires a pair of darts at a range of around seven metres. A high-voltage electrical pulse is delivered through lightweight cables attached to the darts. The shock overrides the nervous system's control of the muscles, incapacitating the person for as long as the current is on.

TADD has up to 12 pairs of darts that can be fired independently at different targets, with a battery capable of delivering up to 200 three-second shocks of 50,000 volts.

more @ Sydney Mercury Herald.

2003-04-27T18:17:00.000-03:00

Customised
copyright licences
going global

A customisable form of copyright license will soon be available internationally through the Creative Commons, a non-profit organisation based in the US. The organisation already offers US artists a way build their own copyright agreement.

Each custom-made license is also designed to incorporate an identifying piece of code that can be stored on a central database operated by the Creative Commons. This tag should make it simple for other artists to search for a piece of music or video that they can legally incorporate in their own work.

The latest Creative Commons initiative is to create versions of the licenses for the UK, Japan, Brazil, Finland and Norway by the end of 2003, says assistant director Neeru Paharia. This will involve translating the US licenses into local legal parlance.

Paharia says this should greatly expand the reach of the licenses, which she says are more flexible and reasonable than conventional licences. "It's tremendously important," she told New Scientist. "We don't want to be restricted to the US - there's a whole world out there."

more @ New Scientist, read also @ Creative Commons about license engine.

2003-04-27T17:54:00.000-03:00

Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's 81-year-old futurist-in-chief by Sandro.

Andrew Marshall Plan
Make U.S. Force
Faster and more Lethal

by Douglas McGray

February 2003

For 40 years, the man Pentagon insiders call Yoda has foreseen the future of war - from battlefield bots rolling off radar-proof ships to GIs popping performance pills. And that was before the war on terror.

Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's 81-year-old futurist-in-chief, fiddles with his security badge, squints, looks away, smiles, and finally speaks in a voice that sounds like Gene Hackman trying not to wake anybody. Known as Yoda in defense circles, Marshall doesn't need to shout to be heard. Named director of the Office of Net Assessment by Richard Nixon and reappointed by every president since, the DOD's most elusive official has become one of its most influential. Today, Marshall - along with his star protégés Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - is drafting President Bush's plan to upgrade the military. Supporters believe the force he envisions will be faster and more lethal; critics say it relies on unproven technology. As US troops gathered overseas, Marshall sat for a rare interview.

WIRED: Until recently, defense planners talked about a "revolution in military affairs." Now the buzzword is "transformation." Why the change?

MARSHALL: Transformation is more of an imperative: We've got to transform the force. I personally don't like the term. It tends to push people in the direction of changing the whole force. You need to be thinking about changing some small part of the force more radically, as a way of exploring what new technologies can really do for you.

What is the next radical change the US will reveal on the battlefield?

"One future intelligence problem: knowing what drugs the other guys are on." One that's still under way is the emergence of a variety of precision weapons, and also coupling them with sensors. Another is the ability to coordinate the activities of separate elements of the forces to a level that has never been possible before. That's promising, but less far along than precision weapons. A third is robotic devices: unmanned vehicles, of which the UAVs are the furthest along, but also similar kinds of devices undersea, and smaller devices that might change urban warfare by being able to crawl through buildings.

Are there revolutionary developments that don't involve combat?

There are ways of psychologically influencing the leadership of another state. I don't mean information warfare, but some demonstration of awesome effects, like being able to set off impressive explosions in the sky. Like, let us show you what we could do to you. Just visually impressing the person.

Did 9/11 change your mind about anything?

Not much. It was obvious that we were wide open to attack.

Has anything happened that surprised you?

The rapidity of the collapse of the Soviet Union surprised me. I thought they were in trouble, but the rapidity and completeness of the withdrawal were really striking.

Is there a precedent for one country staying on top through a series of military revolutions? Or does one country always leapfrog another?

Through most of the 19th century, the British Navy exhibited that kind of thing. But it was quite interesting the way they did it. They tended to let other countries, mainly France, do the early experiments and come out with new kinds of ships. If something looked like a good idea, they could come in and quickly overtake the innovator. They seemed to do that as a way of capitalizing on their advantage and saving resources.

Isn't the United States in a similar position now?

That's probably the case. But some of the countries that would be candidates to make innovations aren't doing it. The Japanese and West Europeans aren't really making big changes. The Swedes are an interesting case. For 200 years their basic problem was the possibility of a large-scale land invasion by the Russians. They've decided that that has gone away. If anything could happen, it would happen across the Baltic. So they're rethinking, given modern technology, how to create a defense largely on sea frontiers. It's possible that they will make some innovations that we'll pick up and capitalize on.

For instance?

They've designed three new naval vessels. One is an air-independent submarine [running on fuel cells rather than nuclear power, which allows it to travel almost silently and remain submerged for extended periods]. They have a surface ship that's a bit more conventional. And then a radically new naval vessel called the Visby, which has practically no metal in it other than the engine. It's constructed to be very stealthy.

You're known for following technology outside the traditional realm of national security. Pharmaceuticals, for instance.

People who are connected with neural pharmacology tell me that new classes of drugs will be available relatively shortly, certainly within the decade. These drugs are just like natural chemicals inside people, only with behavior-modifying and performance-enhancing characteristics. One of the people I talk to jokes that a future intelligence problem is going to be knowing what drugs the other guys are on.

In an era of terrorism and peacekeeping, are Cold War ideas based on striking a big enemy from afar and defending against missile attack still relevant?

Yes, if we want to stay in the business of long-range power projection. And if we play the role of intervening in messy disputes, some of this weaponry is still useful, as it was in Afghanistan. However, we need ground forces to go in and keep the peace.

Does new technology ultimately make us more or less vulnerable?

A friend of mine, Yale economist Martin Shubik, says an important way to think about the world is to draw a curve of the number of people 10 determined men can kill before they are put down themselves, and how that has varied over time. His claim is that it wasn't very many for a long time, and now it's going up. In that sense, it's not just the US. All the world is getting less safe.

< my comment > Pentagon's guys may call him Yoda, but sounds more like Evil Emperor to my ears... < /comment >

more @ Wired.

2003-04-27T17:22:00.000-03:00

Cyber War
Game Tests
Future Troops

by Brian Krebs

In a basement lab littered with computers, monitors and chalkboard diagrams, 14 Naval Academy midshipmen are buzzing about the latest hacker assault on the computer network they created.

Hackers have penetrated their network and erased a database. But lead technician James Shey, stifling a yawn, says this attack is no big deal -- his team saved a backup copy.

Shey has slept a total of five hours out of the last 36. He and the other future Navy officers have been standing cybersecurity watch as part of the third annual Cyber Defense Exercise. The midshipmen, along with teams from the nation's four other service academies, are defending home-grown computer networks from attack by specialists from the National Security Agency, the United States's ultra-secretive surveillance and spy agency.

The war in Iraq drove home the fact that the U.S. military is heavily dependent on sophisticated electronic communications and information technology. As the Pentagon deploys even more advanced systems, planners are acutely aware that a hacker could kill more U.S. soldiers with bits and bytes than with bombs or bullets.

A porous military network deployed on the battlefield, for example, could allow the enemy to inject misleading information about the location of allied and enemy forces, leading to friendly fire casualties or an enemy ambush, said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Ragsdale, assistant professor of computer science at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and co-founder of the exercise.

"We are so highly dependent on information technology that if we don't do the hard work we're doing here, that could soon become a real Achilles heel for us," Ragsdale said. "A network compromise in the battlefield means we could be fed bad information, which could easily cost lives."

Thus the cyber defense program was born to challenge the notion that cyberattacks are an annoying but non-lethal threat to U.S. forces. Begun at West Point in the late 1990s, the training program took off in 2000 when the NSA sent computer scientist Wayne Schepens to the academy. Schepens offered the services of the NSA's own computer security experts, who regularly probe the Defense Department's networks for security holes.

The program is specifically a product of the service academies and the NSA, and is not part of any Pentagon computer security of cyber-warfare effort.

The excercises are, however, "a microcosm of what's going on in our military overall today," said John Arquilla, associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.

"Our military relies on advanced communications and technology to know where the enemy is, and the destruction or disruption of that flow of information can cripple them," he said. "The information technologies that make us so strong are also our biggest weaknesses."

This year's exercise took place on closed "virtual private networks," rather than on the Internet. Teams of eight to several dozen students -- mostly computer science majors -- defended their systems against the NSA hackers from Monday morning to Thursday afternoon. The teams were based at their respective military academies, while the "hackers" operated from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. West Point and the Air Force Academy competed in the first exercise in 2001. The Naval and Coast Guard academies joined last year, and the Merchant Marine Academy joined this year.

As with golf, the winner is the team with the least number of points. Earning points is bad, because it means the enemy was able to bring down part of the network or corrupt its contents.

"What you have here is an exercise in battlefield conditions, where teams were assessed points for any sustained damage to their systems, with each point considered equal to a loss of life," said Bradford Willke of the government-funded CERT Coordinating Center at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, which provided the referees for this year's exercise.

more @ Washington Post.

2003-04-25T14:27:00.000-03:00

FCC Asked to Keep
an Open Internet
for Broadband Users

The Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators -- a group of technology, consumer electronics, and entertainment companies that includes Amazon, Microsoft, and Disney -- is asking the Federal Communications Commission to preserve the free-flowing nature of the Internet by rejecting suggestions that the FCC allow providers of broadband Internet access to steer customers to affiliated sites or to limit the types of devices that could be connected to their networks. Consumer Electronics Association president Gary Shapiro explains: "Manufacturers' investment and willingness to innovate in this area undoubtedly will evaporate if network operators have the right to veto what devices their customers can attach." One fear is that providers of DSL access and cable-modem access will be regulated in the same way. Brian Dietz of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association worries: "Supporters of government-imposed regulations of the Internet are using scare tactics to ask for a government solution to a problem that does not exist. Forcing vague regulatory requirements on broadband providers runs contrary to the spirit of the Internet and would only stifle investment, innovation and growth of broadband services.''

more @ San Jose Mercury News.

Received from NewScan Daily newslist. NewsScan Daily (FREE), a lively summary of information technology news writed by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas. To subscribe, send email to Newscan. Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.

2003-04-25T14:17:00.000-03:00

Russian official
predicts
'catastrophic' events

A top Russian Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying yesterday in Tokyo that a "catastrophic" development of events in the US-North Korean nuclear standoff was imminent and could occur within the next day.

"It is probable that, as early as tomorrow, there will be a catastrophic development of events," Itar-Tass quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov as saying.

He added that the standoff had "reached an extreme stage" but did not give a more detailed explanation about his warning.

Losyukov holds the Asian affairs brief in the ministry.

His comments came as US Asia envoy James Kelly had a first round of low-key nuclear talks in Beijing with "axis of evil" foe North Korea.

Losyukov said that Russia would welcome progress in Kelly's negotiations with Li Gun, the North Korean Foreign Ministry's deputy director for US affairs and a former senior member of his country's delegation to the United Nations.

"If the danger is defused, we would only welcome this," Losyukov said.

China was represented by Fu Ying, director of the Foreign Ministry's department of Asian affairs, but Russia - which had sought to play a role in mediating the Washington-Pyongyang standoff - was excluded.

Losyukov said Russia did not feel snubbed by the decision.

Russia "does not feel left out or hurt," said Losyukov, whose comments came after a meeting with top Japanese Foreign Ministry officials.

Moscow had pushed for direct talks between North Korea and the United States and argued against Washington's demands for a multilateral format for such negotiations.

more @ The Sydney Morning Herald.

2003-04-25T14:04:00.000-03:00

Cyberterrorism on
Iraq War Only
by U.S. Government

by Peter Rojas

The war in Iraq was supposed to dramatically raise the likelihood of a major cyberterrorist attack against the US and its allies. Some even predicted a "digital Pearl Harbor", an electronic assault that could have shut down power plants, crippled the banking system, or disabled the air traffic control network.
DK Matai, chairman and chief executive officer of the internet security firm mi2g, predicted that it was highly likely that "the launch of a physical attack on Iraq will see counterattacks from disgruntled Arab, Islamic fundamentalist, and anti-American groups".

Now with the war winding down, fears that Iraq, al-Qaida or even sympathetic hackers in Russia and China would open up a second front in cyberspace have turned out to be completely unfounded, with little or no evidence that either they or anyone else engaged in cyberterrorism. What happened?

Quite simply, the expected attacks just never materialised. According to Tim Madden, a spokesman for Joint Task Force-Computer Network Operations (JTF-CNO), created by the US Strategic Command to handle network defence and attack, there has been no significant increase in attempts to infiltrate US military computers since the war began.

Internet security firms confirm that since mid-March, the level of activity has been almost normal. "We are seeing the same number of attacks today as we were seeing two months ago," says Vincent Weafer, senior director of Symantec Security Response. "We just haven't seen much evidence of any targeted attacks."

The same cannot be said of US activities. It is widely assumed that JTF-CNO engaged in hacking and electronic warfare against Iraq's telecommunications and information infrastructure, although the Department of Defense refuses to provide any specific details due to the classification of the operations.

There were some instances of war-related hacking over the past few weeks, but nothing that would be considered cyberterrorism rather than cybervandalism. Most of what has been seen, apart from a few opportunistically timed worms and viruses, is a large number of website defacements, the online equivalent of graffiti. Mikko Hypponen, the manager of anti-virus research at internet security firm F-Secure, estimates that altogether, there have been approximately 20,000 website defacements, both pro- and anti-war, since mid-March, with the vast majority taking place within the first few days.

Website defacements occur frequently, regardless of whether there is a war going on, and generally do not result in the sort of disruption or economic damage that can be caused by a virus or worm.

Brian Martin, a security expert with Attrition.org, believes that many would have been done anyway: "There is absolutely no way to say if it is up or down, or if these are just targets of opportunity and [hackers are finding] a different justification for their activity than the day before."

The Unix Security Guards, a pro-Islamic group with members in Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait and Indonesia, are thought to be responsible for hacking hundreds of US government and commercial websites, inserting into many of them the message that the group was part of the "New Era of Cyber War We Promised". And despite the FBI cautioning pro-US hackers against engaging in "patriotic hacking," a group calling itself the Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia hacked the website of the Arabic satellite news channel al-Jazeera.

There's curiously little proof that al-Qaida or other terrorist groups are engaging in cyberterrorism. Robert Andrews, a congressional representative from the state of New Jersey and a member of the House select committee on homeland security, concedes that there is "no evidence on the public record" that any terrorist group has ever launched an attack on the information infrastructure of the US.

more @ Guardian Unlimited.

Received from Politech. POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list. You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech. This message is archived and Declan McCullagh's photographs are here.

2003-04-25T13:02:00.000-03:00

FIRE Declares
War on
Speech Codes

Lawsuit Opens Systematic Assault on Censorship at Public Universities

FIRE Legal Network attorneys David A. French and William Adair Bonner have filed a lawsuit against speech codes at Shippensburg University, a public institution in central Pennsylvania. "The action at Shippensburg is the first part of a campaign to end the nightmare of campus censorship," said FIRE President Alan Charles Kors. "Such codes are a moral, educational, and legal scandal in American higher education. A nation that does not educate in liberty will not long preserve it and will not even know when it is lost."

The lawsuit was filed on April 22, 2003 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. It asserts that the plaintiffs -- undergraduate students at the university -- risk punishment up to expulsion for engaging in constitutionally protected expression. The suit is a "facial challenge" because it asserts that the policies
threaten so much protected speech that their very existence is a violation of the First Amendment. "The University's speech codes...have a chilling effect on Plaintiffs' rights to freely and openly engage in appropriate discussions of their theories, ideas and political and/or religious beliefs," the complaint states. "The University and [President] Anthony F. Ceddia have violated rights guaranteed to the Plaintiffs -- and to all University students -- by the First and the Fourteenth Amendments."

Shippensburg University's Code of Conduct states that the university defends free speech unless it is "inflammatory, demeaning, or harmful towards others." The university requires that "the expression of one's beliefs" should not "provoke" or "demean" -- effectively outlawing most forms of passionate expression, moral outrage, robust discussion, dissent, and protest. Kors noted, "The expression most in need of protection, of course, is precisely 'provocative' dissent from widely held views, even if those provoked see that as 'demeaning.'"

Shippensburg also outlaws "subordination...on the basis of race, color, creed or national origin, communicated through words, attitudes, actions and/or gestures." Shippensburg also prohibits conduct that "annoys, threatens, or alarms a person or group," giving as examples of sexual harassment "innuendo," "comments, insults," "propositions," "humor/jokes about sex or gender-specific traits," and even "suggestive or insulting sounds, leering, whistling, [and] obscene gestures." "Most stand-up comics -- whether feminists or male chauvinists -- wouldn't last a day at Shippensburg," Kors noted.

In a flagrant violation of freedom of conscience, the university also mandates official values by requiring students to display a "commitment to racial tolerance, cultural diversity, and social justice...in their attitudes and behaviors" under threat of official punishment. Shippensburg also quarantines free expression to only two designated areas, leaving the rest of the campus a censorship zone.

Working with public interest law firms and pro bono attorneys in FIRE's Legal Network, FIRE will help organize and coordinate many legal challenges to wrongful restrictions of speech at America's public colleges and universities. Ultimately, over the next year, FIRE will coordinate challenges to speech codes in each of the twelve federal appellate circuits, establishing precedents that will end the scandal of unconstitutional speech codes on college and university campuses once and for all.

"These challenges will strike a blow for the free marketplace of ideas and against campus indoctrination and institutional thought control," said David A. French. "The way to transform society is not through mandating certain beliefs, words, and attitudes, but through discussion, debate, and persuasion. Like many public universities, Shippensburg -- an agent of the state -- seeks to impose its values coercively on students. With this legal challenge, we are fighting for each student's right to follow the lights of his or her own conscience."

Speech codes are both a moral and legal outrage. For this reason, FIRE also will challenge speech codes by the light of public exposure. In May 2003, FIRE will launch Speech Codes, an online database of the restrictions on speech at public and private colleges and
universities across the country. With this searchable website, students, parents, faculty, members of the media, donors, and the public will see how routinely colleges and universities betray their obligations to respect freedom of speech.

"Since the late 1980s, there have been several major legal decisions against unconstitutional speech codes in higher education," said FIRE CEO Thor L. Halvorssen. "FIRE is moving from scattershot approaches to end the scandal of speech codes to a concerted campaign to restore liberty. Ultimately, this unprecedented assault on speech codes, in the courts and in the public arena, will send a clear message: colleges and universities that decide to restrict free speech must face the moral and legal consequences of that decision."

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience on our campuses of higher education. The Shippensburg speech codes and the lawsuit can be seen at FIRE.

< Declan comment > I ended up staying late after my MIT talk and had dinner with Harvey in Cambridge. Harvey is a longtime subscriber to Politech (since 1994) who co-founded the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and in a nod to history, was EFF's first litigation counsel when they were fighting the Steve Jackson Games case. His wife Elsa also happens to be an amazing photographer with one of six 20x24 Polaroid cameras in existence. The output is amazing, and Elsa has also shot with an even larger Polaroid camera that uses 40" x 80" film. Not enlargements, mind you -- this is the size of one sheet of film! See her excellent
work here.

Anyway, Harvey tells me this is one of a series of lawsuits FIRE will be filing to establish the principle that campus speech codes violate the First Amendment at public universities. Eventually FIRE plans to expand this to make breach-of-contract arguments in the case of private universities. This is particularly relevant to Politech because many of the speech code cases nowadays involve websites or off-color mailing list/discussion board posts.

I will be happy to forward a reply from Shippensburg University. < /comment >

Received from Politech. POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list. You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech. This message is archived and Declan McCullagh's photographs are here.

2003-04-25T06:00:00.000-03:00

Court Says
Verizon Must Reveal
Song Swappers

by Andy Sullivan

A U.S. court said on Thursday that Verizon Communications VZ.N must reveal the names of customers suspected of downloading copyrighted songs from the Internet without permission even as it appeals the decision to a higher court.

U.S. District Court Judge John Bates said Verizon must reveal the names of the two alleged copyright infringers within two weeks unless the appeals court says otherwise.

Bates originally ordered Verizon to reveal the customers' names in January, but Verizon had argued that their identities should be protected as it pursues an appeal.

The ruling marks another legal victory for the recording industry as it tries to stamp out the unauthorized Internet song-swapping it says is partially responsible for a decline in CD sales.

The Recording Industry Association of America took Verizon to court last summer in an effort to get the telecommunications giant to help crack down on online song-swapping.

The RIAA argued that Verizon is obligated under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to help its members to protect their copyrights. Verizon says it is willing to help, but argued that the law only applies to Web pages stored on its computers, not traffic on the "peer-to-peer" networks that merely travel across its wires.

After Bates rejected that argument in January, Verizon said that the law also violates free-speech and due-process rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.

In his written decision, Bates rejected Verizon's constitutional arguments and denied the company's request to keep its customers' identities private.

more @ Reuters News.

2003-04-25T05:09:00.000-03:00

Defense agency
pulls OpenBSD
funding

By Robert Lemos

The unused portion of a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to fund development of the open-source operating system OpenBSD has been pulled for unspecified reasons.

The project's leader, Theo de Raadt, said Thursday he was informed by email that the remaining portion of the $2.3 million grant has been pulled. An e-mail from a professor who is managing the grant did not provide a reason, but de Raadt said he believes the cancellation was prompted by concerns about the money going to too many foreign developers and to antiwar statements that de Raadt made to reporters.

"They decided that they didn't want (our project) anymore," de Raadt said Thursday, less than hour after he received notification. "This is it. It's over."

DARPA, the arm of the U.S. Department of Defense that funds research and development and is best known for funding the project that later became the Internet, awarded the grant in 2001 as part of its Composable High-Assurance Trusted Systems (CHATS) projects, said de Raadt.

About $1 million had been allotted to add new security features to OpenBSD, an open-source OS that many consider to be the most secure free implementation of a Unix-like system. The project had finished most of the work in the first three months of the grant and had been recently using the money to fund more security enhancements to the software, de Raadt said at a recent security conference.

A University of Pennsylvania computer science professor, Jonathan Smith, had originally applied for the grant under the title, "Portable Open-Source Security Enhancements," or POSSE. About $500,000 of the money went to several U.K. researchers to do a vulnerability analysis on OpenSSL, a widely used program for encrypting communications, especially to and from Web sites. A handful of flaws were found, de Raadt said.

Smith refused to comment on the funding, citing the sensitivity of the issue. An e-mail to the POSSE project’s DARPA representative wasn't answered.

Earlier this week, de Raadt said he was told that officials from DARPA were concerned about statements appearing in press reports that indicated most of the grant was being funneled to foreign researchers, an apparent no-no for government-funded projects. Moreover, de Raadt believed that the U.S. government took exception to comments he made indicating that the money spent on his project meant that fewer cruise missiles were being built.

"In the U.S., today, free speech is just a myth," de Raadt said.

more @ ZDNet News.

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2003-04-25T04:31:00.000-03:00

"As If We
Had Drivers
Licenses"

by Javier Elorriaga

General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than the storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect: It needs a pilot. General, man is quite useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.

- Bertolt Brecht

Twenty-four hours after attempting to eliminate Hussein by blitzing a residential district in Baghdad with missiles - marking the formal beginning of the Iraqi invasion - we could hear an analyst on the radio explaining to us why another Vietnam was no longer possible. Because the technological superiority of the imperial troops made any kind of resistance impossible. And he said this rather sadly, not like those enslaved consciences of Azteca Television who speak with fascination, from a distance of thousands of kilometers from the impacted houses, about the destructive capacity of the yankee weapons. What the commentator never told us was that it is that very sadness - that dropping of arms in the face of global tyranny's historic fatality, which he himself was feeling - which is also one of the objectives of this new battle of the 4th World War, the war which neoliberalism has been waging against the human species for a decade.

By following the zapatista interpretation - that the Cold War was, in reality, the Third World War of the modern age, and that the 4th World War began with the disintegration of the so-called real socialism - we are able to see how seemingly unconnected events are, in reality, battles which are defining the exact nature of this 4th War. The pulverization of the Yugoslav State and the new parceling out of territories brought by the Balkan War. The invasion of Afghanistan, which changed the geopolitical map of that region, with a new distribution of lands. The torpedoing of the United Nations and its Security Council, those legal instruments which were constructed in order to control the balance between the superpowers during the 3rd War and which are now obsolete for this new phase of globalized capital. And, lastly, the bestial aggression against Iraq and the reaccomodation which it will bring to the entire geopolitical map of the region. These acts cannot be analyzed exclusively as the product of a gang of crazy messianic hawks, but must be seen from the perspective of their being consistent actions, from their criminal point of view, in order to define the new neoliberal world order. The 4th World War which they are waging requires new rules, new instruments, the complete submission of the allies under the formula. You are either with us, the good guys, or with them, the bad guys. One extreme or the other. It is not possible to have another role in the script which the Powers have already established. That is the reason for their contempt towards the world, for the other powers, for world public opinion. They are acting within their own logic: that this is the moment for setting the rules for the New Order - upper case - and the yankee power believes that its military superiority is
a sufficient argument for imposing them.

What we are going through today was outlined in the Powers' words in the days following September 11, 2001, when the North American State decided that it had a good platform for defining the battle fronts of its global war. It was at that time, under the umbrella of anti-terrorist hysteria, when the Pentagon chiefs and those in charge of the yankee government's security agencies cynically declared that anything was allowed in their war against terrorism. For example, making the old illegal practice of assassinating opponents legal again. Or utilizing mass media in order to lie, to deceive, to cover up and to disseminate whatever was considered necessary in the wars which they were preparing to carry out. And, above all, when they allowed us to see that anyone who was not prostrate in front of them, and the New Order they wanted to impose, would be considered a terrorist, as the enemy to be defeated. It was then that the ideologues of the yankee right, grouped in the Project for the New American Century - the same ones who think and speak in the media for the Pentagon and for Vice-President Cheney's office - began crowing again about Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, now retrofitted for the entire world, deeming that the vital interests of the United States were to be found in any part of the world: in any dark corner of the world, said the fanatic Bush. The military arm of the empire had, therefore, the duty and the responsibility to act anywhere, without any justification other than that of declaring its security to be threatened.

That is why this military campaign has not one, but several, objectives for the new order which they want to create: it has to do with destroying Iraq and then rebuilding it afterwards with private contracts. Of ensuring control of the oil reserves of the Middle East. Of striking another economic and political blow at the European Union. Of imposing the new yankee geopolitical concept on the world. And also of totally defeating an alternative vision of the world, through the use of terror.

This is one of their messages to the world, to those governments which told them in the UN that we would not support their waging war without first fulfilling the protocols of balance which still applied among the powers. That is why they were not concerned about world opposition. They are thinking beyond short term political losses, to those rules which they are seeking to impose for global operations.

One of their greatest successes, then, is not when they destroy a hundred tanks or a hundred houses, but when someone in the world openly states that another Vietnam is no longer possible.

That is why it is our duty to say NO to this battle of the 4th World War. Because it is a war against us, not just for Iraqi oil. It is a NO to the world order which they are establishing, a NO which means a 'yes' for humanity, a 'yes' built with the excluded. With the marginalized, with the millions of us who are unnecessary for those few who are already being defeated by the yankee military power's stupid bombs, without them even being on top of them yet. Those few who are seeking nothing less than how to reconfigure themselves and to insert themselves into the new global enterprise, as local managers in the best of cases, as trusted employees at the worst, but, at the end of the day, within it.

That is why we must fight this battle for NO to the war with those same persons with whom we are fighting the battle for humanity and against neoliberalism. With the same ones who make resistance their daily action and who have nothing to lose, since they will have already lost everything if they are defeated by the neoliberal order. We cannot expect much from the governments of the world, which are, at the end of the day, in the main in agreement with the North American State, that is, that this world must be neoliberal since there is no other path. The governments of France, Germany, Russia and China see the danger of being left as secondary actors when the rules of the 4th World War are being defined, and that is why they are opposed to attacks being made without prior consensus among the powers. But it is a great stretch from that to being an ally in the fight against neoliberalism and for humanity. Their dispute with the power of the United States is taking place on a playing field in which the people do not play. We have no other role than as pawns, expendable according to circumstances.

The same thing is going on with the majority of the political parties. They can scream against the war which is being fought thousands of kilometers beyond our borders, but they are doing little against the local war, which is in line with the global one. That war which is being imposed on our lands, that one which condemns the majority to being simple spectators, simple buyers of merchandise or a source of cheap and malleable labor. It is inconsistent to yell NO to the invasion of Iraq and to shout YES to the dislocation of indigenous communities. Yes to approving and keeping the IPAB every year, while realizing that that entails reduced spending in health, education, food and housing for our children, yes to zero tolerance. The NO to the war cannot be separated from the NO to the system of exploitation and exclusion in which we are being kept in every country. The political parties are also playing on another field, one on which we have nothing to do.

We must build this NO with the young people, with women, with those who have been marginalized because of their political, sexual, cultural positions, with all of those who have always, throughout history, found themselves in a position of technological inferiority with the weapons of the masters, of the conquistadors, of empires. Empires which have, certainly, always asserted that their weapons were invincible, from the heavy lance and the catapults of the Roman legionnaires, to the B52s which peppered the Vietnam jungles with napalm. To say nothing of those smart bombs which stumble across a smokescreen along their way and become even more stupid and explode wherever they want. Very, very bright... the ones who are selling them. The more they fail, the more they sell. Their helicopters are so sophisticated that they are of no use when there are sandstorms, and they are in the desert!

The extremely powerful weapons of the empire are dependent on high technology, satellites, electronics, immaculate environments, electricity, just about everything which does not exist where the majority of people live against whom these weapons are bring directed. Our lands are crossed regularly by storms of sand and rain, there is generally no electricity, and growing up on the street, surviving in the ghettoes, on the bottom of the urban and rural ladder, where they want to keep us cornered, develops a sixth sense which all the technology in the world will never be able to equal.

I remember some zapatistas talking to certain persons of good will who were explaining to them how suicidal it was to confront the Powers and their weapons, and, even though they had managed to defeat the federales, there's the gringos, and just look, they have satellites that can photograph drivers licenses from space, said the city folks. The compas looked at them and answered, as if we had drivers licenses.

All empires, past and present, have boasted about their military superiority, about their present conquests as if they were of the future, and we have already seen where they end up. In the black pages of history, in the sad nostalgia of the official textbooks, in those films where the powers praise and justify themselves at the same time.

It is not necessary to drop one's arms, the empire is vulnerable. Because, despite their powerful weapons, they never take the most powerful weapon of all into consideration: the conscious, the innate rebellion which every human being carries within against injustice, against fear, against the lack of hope. Ask the little invading soldiers, on their purported triumphal march towards Baghdad, where the subjects to be liberated, they said, were going to receive them with flowers. After less than one week of combat the commanders ordered the civilian population to not approach their military units. For their protection, they said. For whose protection?

It is one thing to massacre children from the air and from a great distance, and another to physically occupy the public spaces, the streets, the daily life of people who have for millennia resisted all kinds of invading armies, of idiotic empires, excuse me, I mean to say 'invincible.' The mobilizations which are taking place all over the world reflect the fact that people are not only rejecting this war, but that they are willing to fight against it in the most diverse ways. It is absurd to want to standardize the civil response. Many of these actions are defying current legality, and they constitute acts of clear civil disobedience.

Criminalizing those responses would mean nothing more nor less than playing into the hands of the Empire, while illegitimacy and even illegality are entirely theirs. That is why the only thing that comments from CNN or Fox about the violence of the mobilizations provokes in us is laughter. The violence is on the other side. Lying down on the tracks of trains which are transporting war materials, as they are doing in Italy, or interrupting traffic on Fifth Avenue in New York, are actions which have all our sympathy. Despite the fact that some paid commentators are trying to denigrate them.

The struggle of human beings against stupidity and barbarity should not be renounced. It cannot be. It is history itself, and there are still many pages left to be written. Let us write them with rebellion, the future is ours and, from today, it shall be so.

translate by Irlandesa

more @ Rebeldia.

2003-04-25T03:32:00.000-03:00

The Great
Firewall
of China

by Staffan Thorsell

While the Chinese Communist party has decided to commercialise the country's press system, it is tightening its control of it. The economic reforms in the late 1970s and the early 1990s created a press system in which newspapers operate as business operations.

To earn money by using the media, the party wants both its own newspapers and the non-party papers to be financially independent. This has not made expression in China any more free.

The party controls the press by elaborate staff arrangements, censorship and strict policies which demand that newspapers support and promote the party ideology.

It has been difficult for the party to control the internet. But in trying, it keeps introducing new regulations. It has shifted some of the responsibility from its own Ministry of Public Security to the internet service providers.

At first, the party only allowed domestic use of the internet and banned or blocked most international access. But since it started allowing international use, the "PRC Regulations for the Safety Protection of Public Information Systems" from 1994 have been expanded.

Now, internet service providers are responsible for their subscribers. One article states: "Units providing international [internet access] shall establish a network management centre in order to strengthen management of their own units and their consumers according to the relevant law."

And in 1997 the Ministry of Public Security introduced the "Computer Information Network and Internet Security, Protection and management Regulations". It says that it is prohibited to use the internet to create, replicate, retrieve or transmit anything inciting to resist or violate the constitution, laws or regulations.

Anything concerning overthrowing the government or the socialist system is forbidden. Material that incites "division of the country, harming national unification, making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumours or destroying the order of society and injuring reputations of state organs" is also outlawed.

As China claims it is loosening up its public relations, international sites such as Yahoo, Google and America Online, some of which have recently been blocked, will have to adhere to the "Telecommunications Regulations of the PRC."

Effective from September 2000, they state that the following is outlawed: "Material that opposes the constitution, jeopardises national security, reveals state secrets, subverts state power, undermines national unity, harms the prosperity and interests of the state, spreads rumours, disturbs social order or undermines social stability."

more @ Guardian Unlimited and The high cost of internet access in China.

2003-04-25T02:35:00.000-03:00

Battle of the Blog
Builders Take the
Web by Storm

TypePad Rocks the Blogosphere

by Ben Hammersley

The company behind one of the weblog world's most popular tools is preparing to launch a new service which will attack market leaders Blogger.com head on.
SixApart, the company behind the Movable Type weblogging system, is to lanch a new "hosted" service called TypePad later this year.

Like its rival, Blogger, the new system will be stored along with the user's writing on a central server. This means that, for the first time, budding webloggers who want to use Movable Type - regarded as the one of the most powerful weblog-building systems - will not have to hire server space from hosting companies. Nor will they need to go through the sometimes difficult processes required to install the Movable Type system on their server.

It is expected that there will be three tiers of pricing, with varying levels of features and complexity. Pricing will be officially announced in May, with a public beta (or test) version being launched in June.

Earlier this week The Guardian went to the SixApart's San Francisco office, in the home of Ben and Mena Trott, the husband and wife team who run SixApart, for an exclusive look at TypePad. What we saw was very impressive indeed.

Technically, Typepad has embraced all the new things that have appeared or been requested in the blogging world in the past year. There is a built-in photo album creation tool, for instance, as well as a built-in Blogroll - a list of all your favourite sites, or lists of books and music you are reading and listening to.

The standout feature is the template maker. Users can design their blog without knowing, or seeing, any HTML code whatsoever and with a very great range of control.

Other features include real-time statistics, posting by email, and automatic creation of Friend of a Friend data - instantly taking an experimental standard and taking it to the mainstream.

At the same time as the announcement of TypePad, SixApart also announced that they had received a major investment from the Japanese venture capitalist firm Neoteny.

Run by Joi Ito, himself a famous Japanese weblogger, this investment is allowing not just for the launch of the new services, but also the employment of Anil Dash, a famous New York weblogger, as head of marketing and business development.

more @ Guardian Ulimited and Bloggers tool up sequence. read also Six Apart Milestones by Mena Trott.

2003-04-25T02:23:00.000-03:00

Throughout Italy:
The Multitude
Against the Empire

by Luca Casarini

Throughout Italy, ever since the beginning of the bombing of Iraq, there have been continuous, nonstop demonstrations against the war. Marches around military bases - our country is, unfortunately, full of them - thousands of persons laying siege to US and British consulates and embassies, strikes by students, occupations of universities. Rallies, sit-ins, the blocking of highways and railroad tracks, meetings in workplaces, marches with torches, prayers by Catholics in churches, motions for peace approved by town councils.

The reasons for such a constant commitment by so very many persons - despite the fact that the war has already begun - must be sought in what happened prior to this phase.

What must be analyzed, above all else, is what happened, here and in the world, before Bush and Blair's bombs exploded. A multitudinous movement, millions and millions, who simultaneously invaded all the plazas of the planet, in order to try - preventatively - to stop the war. All of us hoped that what the Washington Post had described as "the greatest moment of rupture between the governed and their leaders" - or, according to the New York Times: "The birth of a new superpower, Global Public Opinion" - would be enough to interrupt the tragic plans of the White House and Downing Street. We hoped that, by demonstrating in the plazas and by carrying out very radical actions prior to the war, the forceful position taken by humanity could combine with those conflicts which had arisen within the empire's constituents, among leaders of nations that were not at all peaceful or pacifist, like Chirac, Putin and the Chinese government.

Nonetheless, the war began, without consensus among the people, nor among all the powerful. This tragedy causes one to think, it should make one reflect. We are faced, in reality, with a Coup within the Empire, and the consequences will be suffered by not only the old diplomatic and political institutions, like the United Nations - which has been completely shattered - but, above all, by humanity and its means of constructing a new democracy. We must trust that the people, so numerous, will continue mobilizing for this as well: they are perfectly aware of the fact that the war has a global objective, although the Iraqi civilians are suffering it materially, and that
objective is the construction of a new permanent model of domination in the world.

The leaders of the United States have transformed September 11 into the new Pearl Harbor. There were two possibilities: this one, that is making the world think that the World Trade Center killings were caused by an enemy attack from the outside. The other one, which is taking hold every day, especially in the consciences of millions of US citizens, concerns the economic system of dictators, fundamentalists and CIA officials, oil men, bankers, financiers, sometimes friends and sometimes enemies, sometimes competitors in the global market, other times allies. The idea that this system has collapsed, exploding from within, in the exact same place where it was produced. If the Pentagon's propaganda had wanted to transform September 11 into Pearl Harbor, the war in Iraq could be Hiroshima: the affirmation through force of a model which they want to impose on a global and permanent basis. The most worrisome aspect of all of this is that, exactly as in Hiroshima, it is based on war against civilians. Ever since Hiroshima, throughout all modern wars, civilians have made up between 70% and 80% of the victims. The same ones who had been previously granted dictators, sanctions, blockades, all kinds of suffering, and who are then bombarded, always at the hands of the same, extraordinarily generous, soldiers of good.

The truth is that global public opinion has not managed to stop the war, but it has become established as a new public space, as an alternative to the single belief system. The very concept of war has been transformed, as war against civilians. The concept of peace has also changed, since it is no longer the period of time between one war and the next. How, then, can we refer to a situation as peace which, even without bombings, causes millions of deaths every year from hunger, thirst, AIDS, pollution? These changes in the perception of war and peace were evident during the great demonstrations prior to the attack. Many people had signs and posters which associated the universal "stop the global war" with slogans against neoliberal globalization. For the activist, global public, being against the war means fighting against the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the group of 8 (G-8).

The paths which lead from Seattle, from Genoa, are intersecting with those which are just beginning to be followed in an attempt to stop the barbarity of the bombs. The global war is broken down into different levels of intensity. There is a perpetual state of injustice, of lack of liberty and dignity, which is caused by the multinationals and neoliberal policies. These decisions are made around the sanctuaries of the Empire, and this condition is already being perceived as a real war, since it causes millions of deaths and devastating consequences throughout the world. The movement which is fighting against the war has defined the conflict in Iraq as a war for oil, and the Bush administration is identified with the multinational Exxon, which sells fuel to the Anglo-American troops. The multinationals of arms, which sold Saddam everything necessary for massacring Kurds and Iranians, are now speaking through the voice of Donald Rumsfeld, the minister of the North American war. The people know all of this. And they know that the war for water has begun alongside the war for oil. Almost two billion people throughout the world do not have access to sources of clean water. In September, the next WTO summit will be promoting the privatization of water sources. Opposing it, blockading it, it will be the same for all those who are opposed to the global war.

The movement against the war has established itself as a global and activist public, unifying, in fact, those experiences which have been accumulating throughout the world in the struggles against the neoliberal policies of the Empire's great economic summits, with the ethical dimension of condemnation of the genocide of humanity.
Catholics and laypersons have found themselves together in this terrain, and this fact is relevant and unprecedented, most especially in Italy.

The fact that the bombing started despite the uprising of millions of persons, did, however, bring about an energetic debate on the methods of the struggle. If marching and refusing to accede to the governments would have been enough, then that would have represented a great and positive novelty for everyone. What is happening, unfortunately, emphasizes the fact that the degree of authoritarianism, of dictatorship, in the makeup of the Empire, is extremely high, and it is reducing, as never before, the real spaces for democracy. According to those who rule, public opinion is not heard, it is created. If it is favorable to the new emperors' plans, it is used in order to create staged public spaces, in order to support the actions of the sovereigns. If it is opposed, it must be annihilated. In any manner. With television and clubs, with bombs and with Hollywood. How, then, are we going to oppose such a reality? Obviously, the question is still without any definitive answers, but it is essential for us to begin positing it throughout the world. It is essential, in the universities in Arab countries throughout the world, that they begin to shout "Stop the War!" before "Allah is Great!" It is also essential that it is understood in the west that conflict, direct action, the methods of rebellion, active civil disobedience against the war, are not the romantic details of some antiquated revolutionary dreamers, but the only way to think, in this context, that another world is possible.

But how can we preserve and broaden a public space, a substantive public opinion against the Empire (and one which is also quite fragile from the blows which it receives from the sovereigns), and at the same time traverse that space with methods of struggle appropriate to a substantive movement capable of change? It is a dilemma, but there has already been some experimenting, and there will be much more. The fact is that those who say it was enough to march, or vote, or participate in the decisions of power, have very little voice in the discussion.

The Italian Practice of Train Blocking

During the period which preceded the war, there were two moments in Italy, among many others, of extraordinary importance for the beginning of a response to that question. The first moment was undoubtedly, as it was throughout the planet, February 15, the day of the global uprising against the war. In Rome, millions of persons
from throughout the country occupied the city. It was something which had never been seen before, a multitude of people, aware of being part of something quite large, enormous, which was occupying all the capitals of the world at the same moment. A river of people, united in condemnation of the war, who dreamed of being able to stop it. The fact that this took place based on a call which had been made from Porto Alegre presents us with the idea of the intertwining of them movement of the movements and the new "Stop the War" sentiment. Hours of demonstrations, with the city completely stopped and, at the end, the reading of a new letter from the Sub, read by the mother of Carlo Giuliani, our brother who was assassinated in Genoa by the carabinieri in the battle against the G-8. It should be emphasized that, in addition to the incredible strength of this multitude, was how everyone wanted to know how many people were marching in other place s in the world. How many in the United States, how many in South Africa or in the Philippines, how many in London or in Mexico. Communication went from being something technical to something political, becoming the means of organizing directly and simultaneously. Without belonging to a single organization, being one single multitude. Satellite television and
radio channels were turned on, connected throughout the world, in an attempt, among other things, to speak to the Iraqi people. The red zone of information was violated, through direct production, outside the official media. In Italy, GlobalTV and Globalradio were the disobedient means for being inside that multitude.

Still impressed by something which we had never seen before, and something which had taken place before, and not after, the outbreak of the war, a few days later we experimented with the substantive potential of the attempt to stop the war. All of us had listened to Marcos' words and those of our brothers and sisters from the Selva, and we always had the same question in our minds: How to avoid the easy trap of believing that it was enough that we were many and to produce great events, while the powerful still continued to move forward in their path of death? How to do everything possible in order to stop and to attack that machine of death, without separating
ourselves from that huge multitude? How to build conflict and consensus, how to transform a symbolic movement into a substantive one?

The occasion presented itself to us with the beginning of the transfer of US war machinery from a base in northern Italy to the center, using three Italian trains. The Italian government had authorized it, thus marking its direct participation in the organization of the war. It used trains, ports and airports for the North American army without a debate in Parliament. We learned from reports from railroad and information workers among activists that trains were en route, carrying weapons. In a small station in the province of Padua, on the line to the south, at seven in the evening, two hundred disobedients occupied the station, blocking the train traffic, including the train of death. Fires were set on the railway, as a large number of anti-riot police began arriving. The news was heard immediately, thanks to Globalradio, which began transmitting 24 hours a day, via satellite, the Internet and modular frequency. The train was blocked, but what was extraordinary was that thousands of persons, throughout the 300 kilometers from one base to the other, upon hearing the news, began organizing blockades, in case the police had attacked the first group.

That is how the biggest act of disobedience against the war began, organized by communication, and developed around an impressive number of different methods, whose central objective was blocking the trains of death. That action, which continued for 7 days, without interruption, involved very many, and a wide variety, of persons. From those who provided information about the arrival of the trains and about the police movements, to those who organized stoppages of other trains, activating the emergency brake in order to stop traffic and to allow activists to organize. After workers refused to drive those trains, the government had to militarize them. A debate began throughout the country, and also within the movement, because the State obviously considers blocking trains to be an illegal action. The discussion, however, became quite interesting, since waging an illegal and illegitimate war was much worse.

One of the most interesting aspects was the use of communication as a means of organizing the initiative. Everyone turned into an activist: from the railroad workers who explained the trains' paths to us, to the passengers on the other trains who called the radio if they saw anything strange. From the young people who were willing to sit down on the railroad tracks day and night, to the retired workers advising us as to how we could block the traffic through small acts of sabotage. Globalradio no longer had just an information role. It was directly organizing the most extensive action. The radio itself was action, heart and collective head for the multitude in action. The train blocking initiative - called train-stopping - demonstrated that the war was inside our country, and that it is completely just to disobey laws in order to obstruct it. It secured the enforcement of humanitarian laws, the prohibition of the transporting of military apparatus to be utilized in Iraq, against the laws of the Empire imposed by the Italian government against the views of its citizens.

At that moment, the movement not only turned rebel, but also substantive. As in all wars, all of us turned into deserters, and resistance begins at precisely that point, with desertion, with rejection. The powers had to show their true face: the trains, after many days, had reached their destination, in Tuscany, protected by an army, conducted by soldiers and with blockades on all sides. Then blockades began of civilian airports, as well as incursions into military airports, both of which were being used for the transportation of North American troops. The soldiers often had to carry out transport operations of war materiel cargo in the ports, because the civilian personnel refused.

The Practice of Disobedience Becomes a New Language

War is a complex machine, this war especially. In addition to being different from old wars because it is directing its terror and destruction against civilians and not against armies - which are useless in the face of the appalling technology of death - it is made up of commercial, political and communications mechanisms which have already been revealed, made public. For example, always within the framework of actions attempting to block the war, we discovered that the General Markets of Padua, in northern Italy, were earning millions of dollars for warehousing fruits and vegetables for US soldiers in the war. The North American military administration even had their own commercial contract agencies in that public market, and they were sending the products to military bases throughout Europe through private companies. The disobedients have already, on two occasions, blocked that market. The slogan, "No food for killers," has been joined with the more well-known one of "No blood for oil," which underlines the importance of the role of oil multinationals in this war. In this context, the Esso gas station chain, Italian affiliate of Exxon, has been boycotted and sabotaged in Rome during a public action by the disobedients. Five of them, disobedients from the Corto Circuito social center, were jailed.

At the same time, in Venice and Falconara (central-east), disobedients have blocked Esso's storage facilities for an entire day. Many bank agencies, such as the National Bank of Labor and the Bank of Italy, who are investing money in large weapons company actions, are being blocked during demonstrations, and they write on their windows: "Armed banks." British and North American consulates and embassies are, of course, being laid siege to, protected by the police and surrounded by thousands of people in the marches. These acts of disobedience and boycott are referencing a new language: the movement has become substantive because it is implementing its own laws, from below, in order to end crimes against humanity. It is implementing blockades of the merchandise of war, sanctioning those who are speculating in the war, breaking off diplomatic ties with political representatives of the governments at war. That movement is dreaming up another possible world, and it knows that, in order to achieve that world, it must remove the dimension of unjust and cynical legality of the market of war, in order to make room for humanity.

translated by Irlandesa

more @ Rebeldia.

2003-04-25T01:01:00.000-03:00

First Hemispheric
Meeting
against Militarization

The People speak out, to silence the weapons!

Presentation

Facing the deception of so-called "preventative wars," crimes against humanity, the poverty of people all over the world, and deaths of innocent people, the attacks on liberty supposedly in the name of democracy. Facing impunity and contempt for the international community shown by the economic and military hegemony of the US government and the submission of the Latin American and Caribbean governments, the networks and organizations listed below, CONVOKE organized civil society in North America, the Caribbean, Central and South America to the

First Hemispheric Forum against Militarization

In times of war, the Hemispheric Forum represents the first immediate space in which networks, organizations and people from the entire continent will have the opportunity to sit down and talk, listen, and design initiatives and coordinated actions together to allow us to influence in a more effective manner the protection of all human rights, and work together to find the mechanisms and strategies in order to push the role of the United Nations to the level that international civil society demands.

Facing an actor that has shown it’s intolerance and abuse of it’s economic and military power, in order to defend private interests above human rights, civil society and the many protests all over the world in rejection of these actions, should organize continuous affirmative actions in order to stop these horrible histories from repeating.

The war against Iraq puts to test the possibility of a world order based on the respect of human rights and sovereignty of the People. It is an affront that puts global human security at risk along with the exercise of free determination, the creation of alternative development models for the Peoples, based on the dignity of women and men, and on equality and respect for diversity, and the right to peace.

Even in the midst of a context of war and facing the unleashing of more neoliberal policies imposed by the economic and military threats, the First Hemispheric Forum Against Militarization is an opportunity for civil society from all of the Americas to meet together in order to

1. Discuss the social and human impacts of the US government’s economic-military hegemony in this part of the world,

2. Reflect on the challenges to the construction of a civilized world order guided by the human rights and people’s rights,

3. Make proposals about the role that the United Nations and Organization of American States should play in the strengthening of alternative proposals to the binomial economic-militarization model.

Objectives of the Forum:

1. To share information and analysis about the militarization of the American Continent in all of it’s levels and spheres.

2. To share experiences about the significance of militarism and it’s causes, effects and consequences on rural and urban social, political, economic and cultural life.

3. To unite forces, hearts and wills in order to create alternatives and coordinate actions for peace facing this continental militarization.

4. To create a permanent, long-term process of analysis, reflection, experience sharing and search for alternatives.

This forum will inaugurate the Continental Campaign to Counter Militarization and for Peace.

the Continental Campaign against the FTAA

Grito de los Excluidos

Convergence of Movements of the Peoples of the Americas (COMPA)

Jubilee South/Americas

International Nonviolence Network

Chiapan Meeting Against Neoliberalism

May 6-9, 2003, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

more @ COMPA.

2003-04-24T03:51:00.000-03:00

Google snaps up
Applied Semantics
to Deliver Ads

by Dawn Kawamoto and Stefanie Olsen

Google said Wednesday that it acquired Applied Semantics, a move that aims to bolster its search and online advertising programs but could throw a roadblock in the path of archrival Overture Services.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Applied Semantics, a 4-year-old company based in Santa Monica, Calif., offers technology that understands, organizes and extracts information from Web sites. The company, through its AdSense product, will deliver text advertisements to Web pages based on keyword relevance to the page. This type of content targeting is an area Google entered last month, spurring partnership discussions with Applied Semantics.

"We've been speaking for a couple of months, and the notion of an acquisition is more recent...when we realized our products were complimentary," said Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president of technology.

Google plans to run a number of tests over the next three to six months and pick the best of each company's technology to develop a unified product, Brin said.

In the meantime, the buyout casts a dark cloud over Applied Semantics' partnership with Overture, Google's chief rival in commercial search and in Web navigation. Applied works with Overture to serve pay-per-click advertising links to pages owned by various domain name registries, including Register.com. Applied serves Web pages with Overture commercial links anytime a Web surfer types an unregistered domain name of one of its partners into the navigation bar.

more @ CNet News

2003-04-24T03:36:00.000-03:00

Inside Cisco's
Eavesdropping Apparatus
on ISP's Routers

by Declan McCullagh

Cisco Systems has created a more efficient and targeted way for police and intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on people whose Internet service provider uses their company's routers.

The company recently published a proposal that describes how it plans to embed "lawful interception" capability into its products. Among the highlights: Eavesdropping "must be undetectable," and multiple police agencies conducting simultaneous wiretaps must not learn of one another. If an Internet provider uses encryption to preserve its customers' privacy and has access to the encryption keys, it must turn over the intercepted communications to police in a descrambled form.

Cisco's decision to begin offering "lawful interception" capability as an option to its customers could turn out to be either good or bad news for privacy.

Because Cisco's routers currently aren't designed to target an individual, it's easy for an Internet service provider (ISP) to comply with a police request today by turning over all the traffic that flows through a router or switch. Cisco's "lawful interception" capability thus might help limit the amount of data that gets scooped up in the process.

On the other hand, the argument that it hinders privacy goes like this: By making wiretapping more efficient, Cisco will permit governments in other countries--where court oversight of police eavesdropping is even more limited than in the United States--snoop on far more communications than they could have otherwise.

Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says: "I don't see why the technical community should hardwire surveillance standards and not also hardwire accountability standards like audit logs and public reporting. The laws that permit 'lawful interception' typically incorporate both components--the (interception) authority and the means of oversight--but the (Cisco) implementation seems to have only the surveillance component. That is no guarantee that the authority will be used in a 'lawful' manner."

U.S. history provides many examples of government and police agencies conducting illegal wiretaps. The FBI unlawfully spied on Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., feminists, gay rights leaders and Catholic priests. During its dark days, the bureau used secret files and hidden microphones to blackmail the Kennedy brothers, sway the Supreme Court and influence presidential elections. Cisco's Internet draft may be titled "lawful interception," but there's no guarantee that the capability will always be used legally.

Still, if you don't like Cisco's decision, remember that they're not the ones doing the snooping. Cisco is responding to its customers' requests, and if they don't, other hardware vendors will. If you're looking for someone to blame, consider Attorney General John Ashcroft, who asked for and received sweeping surveillance powers in the USA Patriot Act, along with your elected representatives in Congress, who gave those powers to him with virtually no debate.

more @ CNet News.

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2003-04-24T01:49:00.000-03:00

Tiny Bubbles
Could Help Cool
Future Chips

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a "pumpless" liquid-cooling system for future computer chips that removes nearly six times more heat than existing miniature pumpless liquid cooling systems. The key is to decrease the diameter of "microchannels" through which the liquid circulates, creating smaller bubbles, which in turn can circulate more readily through the system without blocking the cooling liquid. "We were surprised to see that the dielectric liquid forms really miniature bubbles, so they slip through really fast," says Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering. "The bubbles don't block the flow, as you would expect." The researchers found that the Purdue system was 5.7 times better at removing heat than the existing systems. New cooling systems will be needed as scientists pack more circuitry onto chips, creating more heat. Whereas current high-performance chips generate about 75 watts per square centimeter, chips in the near future will generate more than 300 watts per square centimeter, says Mudawar.

more @ Science Daily.

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2003-04-24T01:41:00.000-03:00

Linux Grows
in Higher Echelons
of Computer Business

Rise of Linux is Changing the Landscape

The growing appeal of Linux as an alternative to rival operating systems such as Microsoft's Windows and Sun Microsystems' Solaris is changing the dynamics of the computer software business. Although currently relegated to "back-office" operations that handle e-mail, Web pages, file-sharing and printing, Linux is primed to begin making inroads into the higher echelons of business computing, such as telecom billing and airline reservation systems. A recent Garner report says that "businesses are coming to regard Linux as a worthy alternative to Unix and Windows." That trend has proven a boon for IBM, which embraced Linux in 1999 and now offers it across its entire product range, from lowly PCs to mighty mainframes. Also benefiting are Hewlett-Packard and Dell, both of which have been successful selling Linux servers. But the blossoming of Linux could prove toxic to Sun, which has seen some of its high-end Solaris server customers migrate to inexpensive Linux-run machines. Sun has compensated by offering its own cheap boxes running Linux alongside its more powerful Solaris-based ones, but many in the industry predict the dual strategy is "doomed."

more @ The Economist.

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2003-04-24T01:25:00.000-03:00

Cars Incorporates
Control Features
Tested in War

War Wagons for Peace Time

U.S. automakers are busy designing cars of the future that will incorporate many of the guidance and control features now being battle-tested in the war in Iraq. General Motors executive says, "We will know traffic conditions. We will know if you are starting to get sleepy. We will know if it's raining. We will know if it's below 35 degrees outside." A Ford executive says the company has developed some experimental vehicles "that can detect an accident before it happens" by using a radar system to detect an oncoming collision and responding by applying the brakes and tightening passenger seatbelts. Another new feature being refined by GM is a so-called "Heads-up Display" that uses fighter-jet technology to project a "floating" digital display panel over the dashboard directly in front of the driver, so that s/he doesn't have to look away from the road ahead.

more @ USA Today.

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2003-04-24T01:14:00.000-03:00

Amazon Signs
Search Deal
With Google

Google has inked a deal to provide search services and sponsored links to Amazon.com in an arrangement that signals Amazon's interest in boosting its revenue through Web ads and at the same time allows it to offer visitors more comprehensive search capabilities. Amazon traditionally has not carried advertising on its Web pages, but the company last month filed for a patent on a method for auctioning Web advertisements, raising the possibility that it's seeking to enter the ad market. The two companies, however, emphasized the search aspects of the deal over the sponsored links. "Google's services will enable Amazon.com customers to conduct research across the Web," says Google's VP for worldwide sales and field operations.

more @ CNet News.

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2003-04-24T00:59:00.000-03:00

Palm Makes a
Splash With
New WiFi PDAs

Palm unveiled its first personal digital assistant capable of tapping into WiFi networks, making the $499 Palm Tungsten C device a competitive alternative to similar products from Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard. Palm's earlier models, including the Tungsten W and the I705, offer Internet connections via conventional cellular networks. Palm has also taken the wraps off of the Zire 71, a PDA with a color screen that can play MP3 audio and digital video files and has a built-in digital camera. The Zire 71 is priced at $299, about $100 less than the similarly-equipped Sony Clie. "These are the two best products Palm has ever made," says a Gartner Dataquest analyst. "They've been lagging behind the competition in terms of engineering and design, and this shows they're back in the game."

more @ Los Angeles Times.

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2003-04-24T00:35:00.000-03:00

Penn State
Pulls the Plug
on Students' Accounts

Pennsylvania State University has suspended the Internet accounts of about 220 students after investigations showed they were using the school's broadband network to trade in "publicly listed copyright infringing materials." The school said connections will be restored once the copyrighted files have been removed from the systems. The move came about a month after the school had issued a warning to its 110,000 students, alerting them that illegal trading of copyrighted materials was against the law, and just weeks after the Recording Industry Association of America slapped four students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Princeton University and Michigan Technological
University with lawsuits.

more @ Internet News.

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2003-04-24T00:28:00.000-03:00

Parents
Against
Cyberbullies

A group of parents in California may sue the owners of the Web site schoolscandals.com, which provides links to about 100 southern California sites that allow students to post gossip and make remarks about other students. One woman in the group says, "That kid who said that awful thing is just a stupid adolescent. But who is allowing him to do it? All the adults." Ken Tennen, a lawyer for the site, describes it as a nonprofit, opinion-based message board that is operated by students, and says "People really don't understand that a bulletin board system like schoolscandals.com exposes into the light of day the way that kids actually talk to each other, whether it is on the playground, in the locker room, on the sports field or hanging around the mall." Wendy Seltzer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says only sites that retain the right to edit their content (e.g, newspaper sites) may be sued for defamation.

more @ USA Today.

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2003-04-24T00:24:00.000-03:00

AT&T Tries to
Collect from Victims
of Phone Vandals

AT&T has been trying to get reimbursement for long-distance phone calls made by fraudulently hacking into the voicemail systems of the victims and re-routing international collect calls placed as part of the scheme. The calls were typically placed when the businesses were closed, and were received by voicemail systems reprogrammed by the
vandals to respond with the answer "yes" to the automated AT&T query about whether the customer agrees to accept charges for the call. Linda Sherry of Consumer Action calls AT&T's demand that the victims of the fraud pay for the fraudulently placed calls "outrageous."

more @ New York Times.

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2003-04-24T00:13:00.000-03:00

Cisco's WiFi
Phone Due
Out in June

Cisco plans a June rollout for its 7920 portable phone, which will use a WiFi network to connect. A future update will combine conventional cellular and WiFi capabilities in one handset. Meanwhile, the competition is heating up as similar phones are planned by Motorola, Avaya and WiFi equipment maker SpectraLink. However, the short battery life of these "multimodal" devices likely will prove a technological hurdle for companies planning to tackle the market, says an Aberdeen Group analyst, who based his criticism on his own experience with a Toshiba WiFi-enabled handset that needed recharging after only 75 minutes of use.

more @ CNet News.

Received from NewScan Daily newslist. NewsScan Daily (FREE), a lively summary of information technology news writed by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas. To subscribe, send email to Newscan. Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.

2003-04-24T00:08:00.000-03:00

Justice Department
Supports Music Industry
in Verizon Case

The U.S. Justice Department filed a brief Friday supporting the effort by the Recording Industry Association of America to force Verizon Internet Services to identify a subscriber suspected of violating copyrights by offering more than 600 songs online. Verizon had asked a federal judge to block the subpoena, arguing that it violated the First Amendment's "protection of the expressive and associational interests of Internet users." However, the Justice Dept. filing said the subpoena, which was sought under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was legal. The judge will now have to decide the constitutional issue, which is viewed as an important test of the DMCA's applicability in Internet copyright cases. The filing comes as the recording industry is becoming increasingly aggressive in its quest to identify and punish music "pirates."

more @ Association Press News.

Received from NewScan Daily newslist. NewsScan Daily (FREE), a lively summary of information technology news writed by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas. To subscribe, send email to Newscan. Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.

2003-04-23T22:09:00.000-03:00

Stewart Mocks on
Halliburton's Scandalous
Contract for Postwar

Daily Show Does Bush

by Susan J. Douglas

The Daily Show has recaptured the pre-9/11 sensibilities that prevailed about Team Bush before the attacks encased him in Teflon. The studio audience howls and applauds in delight at Stewart's irreverence. Its core audience (73 percent) is the coveted 18-to-49 demographic.

The TV anchor was taken aback. Unlike the other network news anchors or the New York Times, he considered the disclosure that the Bush Administration had granted a major contract to Halliburton for postwar construction of oil wells in Iraq to be a scandalous lead story. He noted that hearing the news "does make me feel like the government just took a [bleep] on my chest." He then turned to his "senior" senior correspondent, Stephen Colbert, and asked what he made of the Halliburton deal. "Keeping in mind that Halliburton was a major contributor to the Republican campaign and that Vice President Cheney is its former CEO, this move by the government is extremely..." and then Colbert paused. "Unpleasant?" offered the anchor, "nauseating?" Colbert said that nothing quite captured it; what came closest was a German word he translated to mean "to throw one's hands up in mute horror and in this state of paralyzing dread to realize that those you need to trust most have instead confirmed your darkest fears." But Colbert said even that "seems a little namby-pamby in this context."

Welcome to The Daily Show on Comedy Central, the medically prescribed antidote to CNN and Fox. Hosted by Jon Stewart since 1999, this parody of the news is dedicated to expressing utter incredulity over what Team Bush tries to get away with week in and week out. As of this spring, a weekly compilation of the show airs on CNN International, which boasts 160 million viewers. The show has won kudos in Australia, Canada and Britain, where one reporter wrote, "It is difficult to believe that they have actually let him on air." Stewart's on-air persona is that of the outraged individual who, comparing official pronouncements with his own basic common sense, simply cannot believe what he--and all of us--are expected to swallow. The approach of Stewart and his "reporters" is not to attack Bush policies as ideologically problematic; instead, they expose them as utterly absurd, as nonsense, deranged. When Rumsfeld issued his warning to Syria and Iran that the United States would hold them accountable if they interfered in any way in the invasion of Iraq, Stewart asked in barely restrained mock horror, "Do you see what he just did there? He's starting another war." Central to the show's sensibilities, and to its success, is Stewart's insistence that the news generated by Team Bush be treated on its own terms, not as news at all but as fatuous PR, ludicrously out of touch with reality.

Because Stewart is a comic and not a politician, one would expect that he would skewer Al Gore, were he President, with comparable glee. He has, for example, blasted Tom Daschle's criticism of the war by reminding viewers that Daschle voted for the war. Indeed, Stewart told the London Guardian that the show is neither Democratic nor Republican but simply seeks to represent the "politically disappointed." His special target is spin: "We're out to stop that political trend of repeating things again and again until people are forced to believe them." Nonetheless, he has consistently opposed the war, even in his more sober interviews with guests like the prowar comic and Saturday Night Live alum Dennis Miller.

Unlike other late-night comedy shows, which safely go for cheap laughs by dissing Saddam, The Daily Show has recaptured the pre-9/11 sensibilities that prevailed about Team Bush before the attacks encased him in Teflon. The studio audience howls and applauds in delight at Stewart's irreverence. Its core audience (73 percent) is the coveted 18-to-49 demographic. And here's some cheering news: More people (4 million) tune in to The Daily Show in a given week than watched Fox news at the height of the war (3.3 million).

Stewart has a keen eye for Bush's hypocrisies. After Baghdad had fallen, he showed excerpts of Bush's television address to the Iraqi people. "You are a good and gifted people," the President intoned unctuously. "You deserve better than tyranny and corruption and torture chambers." Stewart, sticking out a cocked forefinger as if he were chucking a toddler under the chin, cooed in a high voice, "Yes you do, yes you do, you're a very good country, ga, ga, ga, goo goo."

As part of his assault on the triumph of right-wing PR, Stewart reserves special derision for Fox News. After making fun of Iraqi state TV as a mere government mouthpiece, Stewart asked, "Imagine a government that has an entire TV station to lay out its agenda." He then aired Fox footage, after which he appeared to be hypnotized, chanting, "Must support war, tax cut good." In another show, he noted, "This war has truly belonged to Fox. Not only did they start it...they managed to offer fair and balanced coverage." We then saw Fox footage of a soldier saying hi to his family and closing with, "You're watching Fox News." Stewart couldn't believe it: "They've got soldiers doing station IDs!" He then played a montage Fox aired of the "sights and sounds...of operation Iraqi Freedom," which showed massive bombs exploding in Baghdad accompanied by appallingly sentimental New Age piano music. "That was real," Stewart confirmed in disbelief. "Sounds like our troops have liberated a Yanni concert."

Yes, it is important to itemize, carefully and seriously, all the reasons Team Bush is lethally dangerous to all except the upper echelons of the Fortune 500. But The Daily Show reminds us that ridicule, scorn and laughter may be some of the most effective weapons of all.

more @ The Nation. read also Jon Stewart's Perfect Pitch by Frank Rich. Stewart transcript @ Nathan Newman's blog. founded @ Eschaton.

2003-04-23T21:32:00.000-03:00

Start of an American
Empire or a Fight for
the Republic's Soul?

Empire vs. Republic

by Robert Parry

George W. Bush’s doctrine of preemptive wars is creating a new deep divide in U.S. politics. On one side, Bush and his backers see the Iraq War as the start of an American global empire built around unparalleled military power. On the other, a scattered grouping of skeptics dig in for what they see as a fight for the soul of the American republic.

Without doubt, the Bush side now owns the strategic high ground, asserting vindication in the U.S. ouster of Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein. Bush also can claim near total mastery of a U.S. news media that shed any pretense of “objectivity” as it flooded the nation with heroic images of American soldiers and heart-warming scenes of grateful Iraqis, while downplaying civilian dead and growing signs that many Iraqis resent the U.S. occupation.

The anti-empire side finds itself pinned down, too, by accusations that its opposition to the three-week war was naïve and even disloyal. Plus, it's a disorganized mix of political interests, ranging from old-time conservatives to traditional liberals, from the likes of Pat Buchanan to Howard Dean. Yet as imbalanced as this struggle now appears, both sides agree that it holds in its outcome the future of the American democratic experiment.

The pro-empire side argues that only a militarily assertive United States can address what Bush calls “gathering dangers” facing the nation – even if that means tighter constraints on liberty at home and freer use of U.S. troops abroad. The pro-republic forces say Bush’s imperial strategy is a sham – false security that cedes life-and-death national decisions to the dictates of one man.

Shallow Media

To the pro-republic side, part of the price for empire is the increasingly shallow U.S. news media that largely sanitized the war. Rather than troubling Americans with gruesome images of mangled and dismembered Iraqi bodies, including many children, the cable networks, in particular, edited the war in ways that helped avoid negativity and gave advertisers the feel-good content that plays best around their products.

Fox News may have pioneered this concept of casting the war in the gauzy light of heroic imagery, where Iraqi soldiers were “goons” and interviews with Americans at war were packaged with the Battle Hymn of the Republic as the soundtrack.

But the supposedly less ideological MSNBC may have carried the idea to even greater lengths with Madison-Avenue-style montages of the Iraq war. One showed U.S. troops in heroic postures moving through Iraq. The segment ended with an American boy surrounded by yellow ribbons for his father at war, and the concluding slogan, “Home of the Brave.”

Another MSNBC montage showed happy Iraqis welcoming U.S. troops as liberators and rejoicing at the toppling of Hussein. These stirring pictures ended with the slogan, “Let Freedom Ring.”

Left out of these “news” montages were any images of death and destruction. For instance, there was no scene of a newly orphaned 12-year-old Iraqi boy waving the stump of what’s left of his arms. No sense either of the unspeakable pain of a father who was injured in a U.S. bombing and was about to learn that his three young daughters, who were the center of his life, were dead. [...]

The Saddam Statue

The iconic image of an American soldier and tank helping Iraqis topple a statue of Hussein in downtown Baghdad on April 9 was a case in point. The scene became exhibit A to prove Bush’s claim that he was “liberating” the Iraqis, giving the war a justification even if the U.S. doesn’t find those elusive weapons of mass destruction. After being pulled down by the U.S. tank, the toppled statue was set upon by dancing Iraqis who carried off Saddam’s head as a prize.

For many Americans the scene was a catharsis, bringing relief that the war might end quickly and satisfaction that the Iraqis were finally acting like the grateful people that administration officials had said they would be.

However, Americans seeking a fuller understanding of the moment needed to search the Internet or access foreign newspapers. Those that did found that the close-up scenes were misleading. Rather than a spontaneous Berlin Wall-type celebration by hundreds of thousands, the toppling of the statue was a staged event with a small crowd estimated in the scores, not even the hundreds. One photo from a distance showed the square ringed by U.S. tanks with a small knot of people gathered around the statue.

Indeed, given the political importance of the images, some intelligence experts expressed surprise that so few Iraqis were present. One CIA veteran told me that such images are never left to chance because of their psychological warfare potential. He said all U.S. battle plans include a "psy-war annex," a kind of public-relations script meant to influence the target population – in this case, the Iraqis – and the larger world public, including the American people. [...]

False Assumptions

On the eve of the conflict, Washington’s conventional wisdom held that the “shock and awe” bombing strategy would be so intimidating that much of the Iraqi army would either refuse to fight or oust Saddam Hussein itself. If that didn’t work, the oppressed Shiite community of Basra would rise up and turn over the second-largest city to the Anglo-American forces. Little resistance was expected in the Shia-dominated south.

The Pentagon also warned that the Iraqis would fire off chemical or biological weapons once U.S. troops crossed the “red line” about 50 miles outside Baghdad. That would prove Bush’s chief rationale for war – that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was reckless enough to use them. The U.S. news media published hundreds of articles about this supposed “red line” or “red zone.”

All these assumptions proved wrong. [...]

Civilian Deaths

The falsity of so many of the initial assumptions led some U.S. military analysts to worry about the worsening devastation. Some analysts felt that hope for any meaningful victory – without excessive destruction to Iraq and widespread anger around the world – was lost in the first week when “shock and awe” failed, American forces began the war in a shorthanded “rolling start,” and many Iraqi soldiers chose to fight and die.

Those early surprises left Bush with two choices: either halt U.S. forces and work out a settlement with Hussein’s regime – an alternative that Bush had ruled out as unthinkable – or to crash onto the center of Baghdad laying greater and greater waste from aerial bombings as the U.S. Air Force depleted its supply of precision bombs.

That loss of sensitivity to civilian casualties was reflected in the hasty decision to bomb a restaurant where Hussein was thought to be eating. Though Hussein’s whereabouts remain unknown, the bodies of more than a dozen civilians, including young children and the headless woman found by her mother, were pulled from the rubble.

"When the broken body of the 20-year-old woman was brought out torso first, then her head," the Associated Press reported, "her mother started crying uncontrollably, then collapsed." The London Independent cited this restaurant attack as one that represented "a clear breach" of the Geneva Conventions ban on bombing civilian targets.

But the civilian deaths were of little interest to the U.S. news media. "American talking heads, playing the what-if game about Saddam's whereabouts, never seemed to give the issue any thought," wrote Eric Boehlert in a report on the U.S. war coverage for Salon.com. "Certainly they did not linger on images of the hellacious human carnage left in the aftermath." [...]

Post-War Mayhem

The U.S. media also has largely shielded the American public from the ugly chaos that has followed the military victory, concentrating instead on the humanitarian efforts to rebuild the country.

Yet while U.S. marines guarded offices associated with the oil industry, other government buildings were burned, including the central library where ancient Arabic texts were stored. The national museum – one of the prides of the Islamic world – was ransacked with many priceless antiquities stolen and others smashed.

“They lie across the floor in tens of thousands of pieces, the priceless antiquities of Iraq’s history,” wrote Robert Fisk of London’s Independent newspaper. “The looters had gone from shelf to shelf, systematically pulling down the statues and pots and amphorae of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Medes, the Persians and the Greeks and hurling them on to the concrete.

“Our feet crunched on the wreckage of 5,000-year-old marble plinths and stone statuary and pots that had endured every siege of Baghdad, every invasion of Iraq throughout history only to be destroyed when Americans came to ‘liberate’ the city.” [Independent, April 13, 2003]

The CIA veteran told me that this post-combat chaos was partly the fault of inadequate Pentagon deployment of civil affairs personnel with the troops. The wishful thinking about popular uprisings and surrendering Iraqi troops had left U.S. forces without enough experts to deal with the breakdown of police operations and the lack of electricity, food and medicines, he said. [...]

Imperial Plans

The Bush administration, however, has no intention of withdrawing U.S. military forces in the foreseeable future. It wants to use Iraq as a site for military bases that can project American power throughout the Middle East. In effect, the U.S. plan envisions allowing limited Iraqi self-government with American troops stationed nearby, serving in a role similar to Latin American militaries, which set parameters for civilian governments.

American military officials want four bases in Iraq, including one at the international airport outside Baghdad and one near Nasiriya in the south, senior administration officials told the New York Times. “There will be some kind of a long-term defense relationship with a new Iraq, similar to Afghanistan,” one official said. [NYT, April 20, 2003]

Under these plans, Iraq is intended to be an outpost for American imperial reach into the Middle East. Many of Bush’s neo-conservative backers see Iraq as only the first step in a process of asserting U.S. dominance in the region and elsewhere around the globe.

On this pro-empire side, Bush can count a number of important political allies, including many Christian fundamentalists who have an apocalyptic view of the Middle East, some Jewish Americans who see Arab states as a mortal threat to Israel, and many Middle Americans who distrust multilateral organizations and foreigners, from the United Nations to the French. [...]

Saddam & the CIA

For example, as TV news devoted hours and hours of coverage to the Iraq war, some history about the murky U.S. relationship with Saddam Hussein might have been in order, but it was almost entirely missing in action.

That U.S.-Saddam relationship dated back to the 1960s when Hussein was a young military officer who was both protected and promoted by the CIA looking for a counterweight to suspected communist influence in Iraq. At one point, Hussein’s role in a botched assassination attempt forced him into exile where the CIA supported him, according to former CIA officials cited in a summary of that history by United Press International’s veteran intelligence reporter Richard Sale [April 10, 2003]

Hussein’s tutelage by the CIA explains why he undertook his two invasions of other countries – against Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 – after getting what he took to be “green lights” from the United States. Far from the renegade as presented by U.S. officials, the real Hussein was more of a client who – like Panama’s Manuel Noriega – overstepped his bounds. [For details of Saddam’s “green lights” – including a top-secret document written in 1981 by then-Secretary of State Al Haig – see Consortiumnews.com’s "Missing U.S.-Iraq History."]

With little access to this deeper history, however, Americans can be easily manipulated by the pathos of war. U.S. spirits were buoyed, for instance, by the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, a scene filmed by the U.S. military in the fuzzy green of night-vision equipment and played over and over again to the American people. [...]

Daunting Challenges

With such diverse interests, the challenges facing these anti-empire forces are daunting. In particular, they are vastly outgunned in all forms of media, which makes it easier for Bush and his allies to isolate the critics as unpatriotic and unconcerned about the welfare of America’s soldiers at war.

The anti-empire message is also more complex, requiring historical context and appreciation of the frustrating work of diplomacy. Bush’s argument is easier to grasp for many Americans conditioned by Hollywood’s shoot-‘em-up war movies where the answer is simply to take out the bad guys.

Yet the pro-republic position does have resonance with millions of Americans who understand, at least intuitively, that violence rarely solves real-life problems. Many Americans also share an abhorrence of empire, recognizing that its needs are inimical to the principles of freedom and democracy. Others distrust Bush’s judgment, seeing him as The Man Who Knows Too Little, the character in the Doonesbury cartoon who dons a Roman helmet and declares, “Pox Americus!”

For Bush to be successfully challenged, however, the pro-republic side must undertake a number of initiatives, including investing much more in media – from talk radio and cable/satellite TV to magazines and newspapers. Right now, with few exceptions, that media is limited to Web sites, a few small-circulation magazines and a handful of newspaper columnists, the equivalent of RPGs against Abrams tanks.

Only by building independent media – a difficult task, to be sure – can space be created to delve into the dark history of U.S. policy in the Middle East. And only with an unafraid media can the American people be engaged in a debate about the future of the nation’s democratic ideals at a time of international dangers.

That great debate, which calls for commitment from Americans of all walks of life and across the political spectrum, also must reach beyond the emotionalism, ignorance and jingoism that today are paving the road toward endless international conflict.

read the complete version @ Consortium News.

2003-04-23T20:24:00.000-03:00

A Chill Wind
is Blowing
in This Nation...

Transcript of the speech given by actor Tim Robbins to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 2003.

Thank you. And thanks for the invitation. I had originally been asked here to talk about the war and our current political situation, but I have instead chosen to hijack this opportunity and talk about baseball and show business. (Laughter.) Just kidding. Sort of.

I can't tell you how moved I have been at the overwhelming support I have received from newspapers throughout the country in these past few days. I hold no illusions that all of these journalists agree with me on my views against the war. While the journalists' outrage at the cancellation of our appearance in Cooperstown is not about my views, it is about my right to express these views. I am extremely grateful that there are those of you out there still with a fierce belief in constitutionally guaranteed rights. We need you, the press, now more than ever. This is a crucial moment for all of us.

For all of the ugliness and tragedy of 9-11, there was a brief period afterward where I held a great hope, in the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at Ground Zero, in the midst of my children's terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all this, I held on to a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of it.

I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can't, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.

And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior.

In the 19 months since 9-11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided, and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state.

This past weekend, Susan and I and the three kids went to Florida for a family reunion of sorts. Amidst the alcohol and the dancing, sugar-rushing children, there was, of course, talk of the war. And the most frightening thing about the weekend was the amount of times we were thanked for speaking out against the war because that individual speaking thought it unsafe to do so in their own community, in their own life. Keep talking, they said; I haven't been able to open my mouth.

A relative tells me that a history teacher tells his 11-year-old son, my nephew, that Susan Sarandon is endangering the troops by her opposition to the war. Another teacher in a different school asks our niece if we are coming to the school play. They're not welcome here, said the molder of young minds.

Another relative tells me of a school board decision to cancel a civics event that was proposing to have a moment of silence for those who have died in the war because the students were including dead Iraqi civilians in their silent prayer.

A teacher in another nephew's school is fired for wearing a T- shirt with a peace sign on it. And a friend of the family tells of listening to the radio down South as the talk radio host calls for the murder of a prominent anti-war activist. Death threats have appeared on other prominent anti-war activists' doorsteps for their views. Relatives of ours have received threatening e-mails and phone calls. And my 13-year-old boy, who has done nothing to anybody, has recently been embarrassed and humiliated by a sadistic creep who writes -- or, rather, scratches his column with his fingernails in dirt.

Susan and I have been listed as traitors, as supporters of Saddam, and various other epithets by the Aussie gossip rags masquerading as newspapers, and by their fair and balanced electronic media cousins, 19th Century Fox. (Laughter.) Apologies to Gore Vidal. (Applause.)

Two weeks ago, the United Way canceled Susan's appearance at a conference on women's leadership. And both of us last week were told that both we and the First Amendment were not welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

A famous middle-aged rock-and-roller called me last week to thank me for speaking out against the war, only to go on to tell me that he could not speak himself because he fears repercussions from Clear Channel. "They promote our concert appearances," he said. "They own most of the stations that play our music. I can't come out against this war."

And here in Washington, Helen Thomas finds herself banished to the back of the room and uncalled on after asking Ari Fleischer whether our showing prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay on television violated the Geneva Convention.

A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications.

Every day, the air waves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear.

I am sick of hearing about Hollywood being against this war. Hollywood's heavy hitters, the real power brokers and cover-of-the- magazine stars, have been largely silent on this issue. But Hollywood, the concept, has always been a popular target.

I remember when the Columbine High School shootings happened. President Clinton criticized Hollywood for contributing to this terrible tragedy -- this, as we were dropping bombs over Kosovo. Could the violent actions of our leaders contribute somewhat to the violent fantasies of our teenagers? Or is it all just Hollywood and rock and roll?

I remember reading at the time that one of the shooters had tried to enlist to fight the real war a week before he acted out his war in real life at Columbine. I talked about this in the press at the time. And curiously, no one accused me of being unpatriotic for criticizing Clinton. In fact, the same radio patriots that call us traitors today engaged in daily personal attacks on their president during the war in Kosovo.

Today, prominent politicians who have decried violence in movies -- the "Blame Hollywooders," if you will -- recently voted to give our current president the power to unleash real violence in our current war. They want us to stop the fictional violence but are okay with the real kind.

And these same people that tolerate the real violence of war don't want to see the result of it on the nightly news. Unlike the rest of the world, our news coverage of this war remains sanitized, without a glimpse of the blood and gore inflicted upon our soldiers or the women and children in Iraq. Violence as a concept, an abstraction -- it's very strange.

As we applaud the hard-edged realism of the opening battle scene of "Saving Private Ryan," we cringe at the thought of seeing the same on the nightly news. We are told it would be pornographic. We want no part of reality in real life. We demand that war be painstakingly realized on the screen, but that war remain imagined and conceptualized in real life.

And in the midst of all this madness, where is the political opposition? Where have all the Democrats gone? Long time passing, long time ago. (Applause.) With apologies to Robert Byrd, I have to say it is pretty embarrassing to live in a country where a five-foot- one comedian has more guts than most politicians. (Applause.) We need leaders, not pragmatists that cower before the spin zones of former entertainment journalists. We need leaders who can understand the Constitution, congressman who don't in a moment of fear abdicate their most important power, the right to declare war to the executive branch. And, please, can we please stop the congressional sing-a- longs? (Laughter.)

In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when an administration official releases an attack ad questioning the patriotism of a legless Vietnam veteran running for Congress, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. It is time to get fierce. And it doesn't take much to shift the tide. My 11-year-old nephew, mentioned earlier, a shy kid who never talks in class, stood up to his history teacher who was questioning Susan's patriotism. "That's my aunt you're talking about. Stop it." And the stunned teacher backtracks and began stammering compliments in embarrassment.

Sportswriters across the country reacted with such overwhelming fury at the Hall of Fame that the president of the Hall admitted he made a mistake and Major League Baseball disavowed any connection to the actions of the Hall's president. A bully can be stopped, and so can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice.

The journalists in this country can battle back at those who would rewrite our Constitution in Patriot Act II, or "Patriot, The Sequel," as we would call it in Hollywood. We are counting on you to star in that movie. Journalists can insist that they not be used as publicists by this administration. (Applause.) The next White House correspondent to be called on by Ari Fleischer should defer their question to the back of the room, to the banished journalist du jour. (Applause.) And any instance of intimidation to free speech should be battled against. Any acquiescence or intimidation at this point will only lead to more intimidation. You have, whether you like it or not, an awesome responsibility and an awesome power: the fate of discourse, the health of this republic is in your hands, whether you write on the left or the right. This is your time, and the destiny you have chosen.

We lay the continuance of our democracy on your desks, and count on your pens to be mightier. Millions are watching and waiting in mute frustration and hope - hoping for someone to defend the spirit and letter of our Constitution, and to defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism.

Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's defeat. These are challenging times. There is a wave of hate that seeks to divide us -- right and left, pro-war and anti-war. In the name of my 11-year-old nephew, and all the other unreported victims of this hostile and unproductive environment of fear, let us try to find our common ground as a nation. Let us celebrate this grand and glorious experiment that has survived for 227 years. To do so we must honor and fight vigilantly for the things that unite us -- like freedom, the First Amendment and, yes, baseball. (Applause.)

more @ Common Dreams News Center.

2003-04-23T20:03:00.000-03:00

Hunt for Iraqi
Arms Erodes
Assumptions

by Barton Gellman

With little to show after 30 days, the Bush administration is losing confidence in its prewar belief that it had strong clues pointing to the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction concealed in Iraq, according to planners and participants in the hunt.

After testing some -- though by no means all -- of their best leads, analysts here and in Washington are increasingly doubtful that they will find what they are looking for in the places described on a five-tiered target list drawn up before fighting began. Their strategy is shifting from the rapid "exploitation" of known suspect sites to a vast survey that will rely on unexpected discoveries and leads.

Late last week, the U.S. Central Command began moving urgently to expand security around a wider range of facilities in an effort to preserve evidence that defense officials fear is melting away. That imperative grew from intelligence suggesting that Iraqi insiders have stolen files, electronic data and equipment from nonconventional arms programs under the cover of recent looting. Analysts said they believe that former Iraqi officials hope to conceal their culpability, barter for status with the U.S. military government or sell the technology for private gain.

If such weapons or the means of making them have been removed from the centralized control of former Iraqi officials, high-ranking U.S. officials acknowledged, then the war may prove to aggravate the proliferation threat that President Bush said he fought to forestall.

"It's a danger," Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said in a telephone interview. There are signs, he said, "that some of the looting is actually strategic." Former Baath Party and Iraqi government officials appear to be "doing at least some of the looting" of government facilities, he said, "including those that might have records or materials" relating to weapons of mass destruction.

Bush launched and justified the war with a flat declaration of knowledge "that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who took the lead public role in defending that proposition, said, among other particulars, that "our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons" agents.

more @ Washington Post.

2003-04-18T04:11:00.000-03:00

Freedom-Minded People
Hope for Liberty
in "Economic Secession"

Economic Secession Won't Succeed

by Paul Birch and Gene Callahan

Some freedom-minded people pin their hope for liberty on withdrawing from an unfree world. In times of crisis, such as wars and recessions, this idea gains popularity. We might refer to this notion as "economic secession," borrowing the name from John Kennedy's article of the same title. Despairing of advancing the cause of liberty in society at large, they hope to be able to secure their own liberty anyway.

They may put their trust in new computer technologies, which they believe will let them hide money and economic transactions from the taxman. They may hope to withdraw into some remote location and "unplug from the grid." You can find ideas falling broadly under the umbrella of economic secession at Backwoods Home Magazine, in the writings of Claire Wolfe, in the many books on financial privacy, encryption, becoming invisible, and so on.

We don't mean to disparage someone who wants to move to the remote countryside, encrypt his email, or set up a numbered bank account in Bermuda. Such activities are not, in themselves, objectionable, and they may be a good choice for some people. But we do wish to point out that they do not solve the problem of the gradual erosion of liberty in our world.

We will not discuss the issue of whether it would be morally sound to abandon our fellows and withdraw from the effort to improve human life in society. We don't need to do so, because the attempt fails on its own terms, for several reasons.

First of all, "economic secessionists" often seem to confuse money with wealth. If they can hide their cash, they think, they can avoid taxes. But money is only useful in so far as you can exchange it for the economic goods and services you want to enjoy. In the long run you have to keep your real wealth where you live, or transfer it there. Otherwise it's worthless. Most real wealth is highly visible. The government of the place where you live or spend your time will be able to see this wealth and gain access to it; and thus can readily tax and regulate it. There is no sense in imagining that hiding your cash will get you off the hook; the government will simply seize your real assets for failure to pay taxes on them, as they already do today.

In many countries, governments have in recent years found it convenient for political purposes to shift the burden of taxation away from income taxes, towards sales and property taxes; and this at a time of rising taxes overall. For example, in the past two decades, income tax rates in the U.K. have fallen by about 30%, but local property taxes (rates and council tax) have increased three or four fold. Thus we should not expect the taxation of real wealth to prove problematic, even in those unlikely scenarios in which it is supposed that the bulk of ordinary people's incomes could be successfully concealed.

We would also point out that governments are increasingly forming tax collection cartels; there are no longer any real tax havens that the U.S. and other high-tax countries are not now bullying into submission. Ireland has come under pressure from other E.U. states for having "too low" a corporate tax rate. The U.S. is pushing the I.M.F. and World Bank to crackdown on "money laundering." The O.E.C.D. has been addressing the "problem" of countries that engage in "harmful tax competition." Even Switzerland, with its traditional and much-vaunted banking privacy, has caved in.

Economic secessionists may think that making it more expensive for the government to collect taxes will reduce its incentive to do so. But taxation is not, for the most part, about the government "making money," because modern governments actually consume only a tiny fraction of the total tax revenue; rather it is about redirecting the spending of individuals, and thus the collective spending of the economy, in ways predicated upon the political goals of the regime.

Typically, the cost of collecting a tax amounts to no more than a few percent of the revenue obtained; so the ability of governments to tax would not seriously be impeded until tax collection became at least fifty times more expensive (something the ready accessibility of real wealth makes most improbable). Note, by the way, that in order to promote their political aims governments may continue to collect particular taxes even when the monetary cost exceeds the monetary revenue. The marginal cost of collection, in cash terms, doesn't worry them.

People rarely go into politics or public administration in order to make money. Many of them could become considerably wealthier in the private sector (in purely pecuniary terms, though not in terms of what they actually want). What they want is mostly influence—for a wide variety of motives, both selfish and altruistic. They want to be (and in fact are) important—even if that importance is often only that of being an important pain in the neck.

more @ Mises Daily Article.

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2003-04-18T03:56:00.000-03:00

In Search
of a Bigger
Search Engine

Web search firm LookSmart last week released a screensaver that harnesses the spare computing power of volunteers in a massive project to index the Web. The Grub screensaver has been downloaded by more than 1,000 people so far and is doing a "distributed crawl" of more than 26 million Web pages. LookSmart hopes that as more volunteers sign up, the system's crawl will be capable of indexing the entire Web's estimated 10 billion pages -- every day. (By contrast, Google indexes about a third of the Web and refreshes its index every 30 days, according to LookSmart.) "It will be the first comprehensive index (of the Net)," says Kord Campbell, the programmer behind the Grub software. LookSmart technology director Andre Stechert says over time, more sophisticated capabilities will be added to Grub, including the ability to index pages and perform "link analysis." And if the Grub project attracts enough volunteers, it may be capable of performing the holy grail of Web searches: a real-time "semantic parse" of the Web. LookSmart says it will open up as much of the index as possible to the public. "We're building a community-based infrastructure, and because it's community-based, we're giving back," says Stechert. Meanwhile, Google's Peter Norvig, director of search quality, says while the Grub project is interesting, the key to improving Web searches isn't widening an index, but narrowing it. "I don't want more computers or bandwidth. I want more clues about which page to look at rather than another page. The problem is how to rank the right pages. The problem for us is how do we direct the crawl, not do we have enough resources to get the crawl."

more @ Wired.

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2003-04-18T03:49:00.000-03:00

Net Drop Outs:
Pew Study of
Internet Evaders

A study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project has found that 42 % of American adults are not connected to the Internet, even though two out of three of those people have relatives or close friends who do. In addition, the study's authors label as "Net Evaders" 20% of the nonusers who live in Internet-connected homes where other relatives go online. And then there's a category of "Net Dropouts" to characterize the 17% of nonusers who tried the Net and didn't like it. The director of the Pew project says of the Net Dropouts: "Some grew disillusioned with the online world. They decided it was just a time swamp, or they never found what they wanted." [They have our full sympathies. If the poor wretches never found NewsScan, who can blame them for jumping ship?]

more @ New York Times.

Received from NewScan Daily newslist. NewsScan Daily (FREE), a lively summary of information technology news writed by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas. To subscribe, send email to Newscan. Copyright 2003. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.

2003-04-18T03:43:00.000-03:00

Online Baseball
Scores a Hit
With MLB.TV

In its first two weeks of service, MLB.TV has signed up 20,000 subscribers -- just 5,000 short of the total forecast for the entire season by CEO Bob Bowman. Thanks to the combination of hefty subscription fees ($79.95 per season or $14.95 a month), the $20 million that RealNetworks paid for exclusive rights to MLB content, and a raft of top-drawer advertisers, the online sports venture is already operating in the black. And MLB's not the only one -- from fantasy leagues to live footage, online sports ventures are raking in the dough, and are rapidly morphing from an afterthought freebie and marketing tool to a stand-alone business that provides small but significant revenues to professional and college sports leagues. According to research firm comScore Networks, revenues were about $40 million in 2002, up more than 100% from the previous year. And Forrester Research estimates that online advertising on sports-themed sites should bring in an additional $2.4 billion in 2004, with sports-related e-tail tallying $4.7 billion more. By 2004, as much as 15% of the typical pro franchise's total revenue could come from the Web, says Forrester.

more @ Business Week.

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2003-04-18T00:24:00.000-03:00

World Islamic Front
Statement: Jihad Against
Jews and Crusaders

Shaykh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin

Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt

Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group

Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan

Fazlur Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh

23 February 1998

Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.

The Arabian Peninsula has never -- since Allah made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas -- been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter.

No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al-Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: "As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."

On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah."

This is in addition to the words of Almighty Allah: "And why should ye not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -- women and children, whose cry is: 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"

We -- with Allah's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.

Almighty Allah said: "O ye who believe, give your response to Allah and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that Allah cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."

Almighty Allah also says: "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For Allah hath power over all things."

Almighty Allah also says: "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."

< FAS comment > The following statement from Usama bin Laden and his associates purports to be a religious ruling (fatwa) requiring the killing of Americans, both civilian and military. This document is part of the evidence that links the bin Laden network to the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The original Arabic text of this statement may be found here. < /comment >

founded @ Federation of American Scientists.

2003-04-18T00:09:00.000-03:00

PM: 'Iraq war created
an opportunity with the
Palestinians we can't miss'

by Ari Shavit

Outside the bureau the usual spin is spun. There's no concern at all. Relations with George Bush are excellent. Mutual esteem, reciprocal fondness, joint credibility abound. So what's to be afraid of? There's no danger the "road map" will turn into a road trap. Anyway, Ariel Sharon is good at getting out of traps. It's his speciality, leading others into the traps he himself has eluded.

However, the prime minister is not the same person he was not so long ago. Polite as always, evoking memories as always, but more cautious than ever. Lying under every question he sees a landmine. Lying under every statement is a crisis it is liable to foment.

Since the elections he hasn't spoken out much. In fact, even during the election campaign he didn't speak very much. The last time he said something explicit and clear, Justice Mishael Cheshin cut him off. No, he hasn't forgotten that, and no, he didn't like it. But no one will catch him uttering a word of criticism about a judge. He won't say a word about the journalists, either. He recognizes the importance of a free media. But the words he used then - you have gone crazy - reflects his feeling. What happened during the election campaign he still sees as a clear-cut case of irrational behavior.

The year that has passed since the Passover eve massacre at the hotel in Netanya was his greatest year. He responded to the crescendo of terrorism with military might - Operation Defensive Shield - and with political moderation (the confrontation with Benjamin Netanyahu at the Likud Central Committee meeting). In his mid-seventies he achieved unprecedented popularity because he proved so adept at maneuvering within the Bush-Arafat-Netanyahu triangle.

It was the solid backing of the president of the United States that made it possible for him to imprison Arafat in the Muqata and Netanyahu in the treasury. However, the suspicion is looming now that the year of grace is drawing to a close; that it is Bush who is about to imprison Sharon himself in the road map. So things are very tense these days in the Prime Minister's Bureau. Quiet, but tense.

Prime Minister Sharon, we are at an astonishing historic moment. The reality around us is changing radically. From your point of view, is the new reality in the Middle East after the fall of Iraq promising or dangerous? Good or bad for Israel?

Sharon: "The Iraqi leadership was a horrific and murderous one. As early as 20 years ago they understood it was impossible to acquire an Islamic bomb, and therefore it had to be manufactured. So the removal of Iraq as a threat is definitely a relief. However, this does not mean that all of the problems we are facing have been removed. Iran is making every effort to produce weapons of mass destruction and is engaged in making ballistic missiles. Libya is making a very great effort to acquire nuclear weapons. What is developing in these countries is dangerous and serious. In Saudi Arabia, too, there is a regime that grants sanctioned aid to terrorist organizations here.

Are you saying that what happened in Iraq has to happen, in one way or another, in Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia?

"In the matter of Iraq, the United States showed leadership at the highest level. I don't think it is realistic to think that immediately after the conclusion of one campaign, another will begin. Even a superpower has limits. When you win, you are also weakened to a certain degree.

"But we face the possibility that a different period will begin here. The move carried out in Iraq generated a shock through the Middle East and it brings with it a prospect of great changes. There is an opportunity here to forge a different relationship between us and the Arab states, and between us and the Palestinians. That opportunity must not be neglected. I intend to examine these things with all seriousness."

Do you think there is a prospect of reaching a settlement in the foreseeable future?

"That depends first and foremost on the Arabs. It obligates a different type of leadership - a battle against terrorism and a series of reforms. It obligates the absolute cessation of the incitement and the dismantling of all terrorist organizations. But if there will be a leadership that understands these things and will carry them out seriously, the possibility of reaching a settlement exists."

Do you consider Abu Mazen a leader with whom you will be able to reach a settlement?

"Abu Mazen understands that it is impossible to vanquish Israel by means of terrorism."

One day very soon the telephone might ring. The president of the United States will be on the line. He will tell you, Arik, I have removed an existential threat from Israel, I am fomenting a revolution throughout the region. Now the time has come for you to make your contribution. Let's have Netzarim, please."

"There are some matters regarding which we will be ready to take far-reaching steps. We will be ready to carry out very painful steps. But there is one thing that I told President Bush a number of times - I made no concessions in the past, and I will make no concessions now, or ever make concessions in the future, with regard to anything that is related to the security of Israel. I explained to President Bush and made it clear to him that this is the historic responsibility that I bear for the future and the fate of the Jewish people. You should know this - on this subject there will be no concessions. We will be the ones who in the end decide what is dangerous for Israel and what is not dangerous for Israel."

And what about Netzarim? [An isolated settlement in the Gaza Strip]

"I don't want to get into a discussion of any specific place now. This is a delicate subject and there is no need to talk a lot about it. But if it turns out that we have someone to talk to, that they understand that peace is neither terrorism nor subversion against Israel, then I would definitely say that we will have to take steps that are painful for every Jew and painful for me personally."

Isn't that phrase "painful concessions" a hollow expression?

"Definitely not. It comes from the depth of my soul. Look, we are talking about the cradle of the Jewish people. Our whole history is bound up with these places. Bethlehem, Shiloh, Beit El. And I know that we will have to part with some of these places. There will be a parting from places that are connected to the whole course of our history. As a Jew, this agonizes me. But I have decided to make every effort to reach a settlement. I feel that the rational necessity to reach a settlement is overcoming my feelings."

You established the settlements and you believed in the settlements and nurtured them. Are you now prepared to consider the evacuation of isolated settlements?

"If we reach a situation of true peace, real peace, peace for generations, we will have to make painful concessions. Not in exchange for promises, but rather in exchange for peace."

Some people expect you to be an Israeli [Charles] de Gaulle - a national leader, a general, who at a certain point understands that reality has changed and turns his back on part of his own history and creates a dramatic historical turning point. Do you have any such aspirations?

"One has to remember one thing about the comparison with de Gaulle - `Algeria' is here. It is not a few hundred kilometers away. The required measure of caution here is therefore much greater."

But I am asking about you. Do you want to be remembered as the one who spearheaded such a dramatic change?

"Let me tell you something. I am determined to make a real effort to reach a real agreement. I think that anyone who saw the tremendous thing called the State of Israel in the making possibly understands things better and knows better how to reach a solution. That is why I think that this task rests with my generation, which was privileged to live through one of the most dramatic periods in the history of the Jewish people.

"I am 75 years old. I have no political ambitions beyond the position I now hold. I feel that my goal and my purpose is to bring this nation to peace and security. That is why I am making tremendous efforts. I think that this is something that I have to leave behind me - to try to reach an agreement."

Have you really accepted the idea of to states for two peoples? Do you really plan to divide western Israel?

"I believe that this is what will happen. One has to view things realistically. Eventually there will be a Palestinian state. I view things first and foremost from our perspective. I do not think that we have to rule over another people and run their lives. I do not think that we have the strength for that. It is a very heavy burden on the public and it raises ethical problems and heavy economic problems."

Even so, under your leadership Israel went back to directly controlling Palestinian cities.

"Our stay in Jenin and in Nablus is temporary. Our presence in those cities was created in order to protect Israeli citizens from terrorist activities. It is not a situation that can persist."

In the past you talked about a long-term interim agreement. Did you not believe in a permanent solution and an end to the conflict?

"I think opportunities have currently been created that did not exist before. The Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular have been shaken. There is therefore a chance to reach an agreement faster than people think."

The Israeli public chose you twice by a large majority because it wants you to repulse Yasser Arafat and beat him. Have you done that?

"I think that one of our successes is that we opened many people's eyes to the true nature of the Palestinian Authority and the nature of the person who heads it, making him irrelevant. When I used that phrase in the past it shocked many of our supporters, mainly those who write and express themselves. But in the end, Arafat became irrelevant."

Do you not fear that perhaps you won the battle against Arafat and against the terror but lost in the matter of the Palestinian state and the settlements? After all, the thing on the agenda now is the road map, which is not very comfortable for Israel.

"We supported the principles that were presented in President Bush's speech of June 24, 2002. As long as the sketch matches the speech, it is acceptable to us. Regarding the latest draft that was sent to us, we have 14 or 15 reservations that I have passed on to the White House."

What are the main reservations?

"The main issue is security. How terror will be handled. There is no difference of opinion in this matter but there is a difference in the wording.

The second matter is that of the implementation of the stages. Our understanding with the United States is that the will be no transition from one stage to the next without the completion of the previous stage. The determining factor is not the timetable but the execution. That is why the issue of the stages is of paramount importance to us.

Our third reservation concerns the right of return. This definitely poses a problem.

Is your willingness to recognize a Palestinian state conditional on the Palestinians backing down from their demand for the right of return?

"If there is ever to be an end to the conflict the Palestinians must recognize the Jewish people's right to a homeland and the existence of an independent Jewish state in the homeland of the Jewish people. I feel that this is a condition for what is called an end to the conflict. This is not a simple thing. Even in the agreements we signed with Egypt and Jordan this was impossible. That is why they did bring about an end to the conflict. They are important agreements, very important, but they did not bring about an end to the conflict. The end of the conflict will come only with the arrival of the recognition of the Jewish people's right to its homeland.

That has to do with the end of the process. But do you think that the compromise on the right of return has to come beforehand?

"This issue must be clear right from the outset."

Would you be willing, perhaps as a gesture to the Americans, to freeze construction in the settlements or to evacuate illegal outposts as part of the first stage?

"That is a sensitive issue. In the final stage of negotiations it will be brought up for discussion. We don't have to deal with it just now."

One of your tactical achievements is your success in avoiding as much as possible any situation that forces you to make difficult choices. But if we are in fact approaching the moment of truth and your choice will have to be between Bush and Ze'ev Hever. [A prominent settler leader and close associate of Sharon's]. Who will you choose?

"Each of the two people you mentioned is a special and impressive person. Each of them is very impressive in his own field."

Bush will also have to choose soon between two people whom he appreciates - Ariel Sharon and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Are you not afraid that even with all Bush's respect and affection for you he will choose Blair?

"We are not under pressure. There is dialogue. Sometimes we see things the same way, sometimes we view them differently. But our relationship is very close. Our relationship with the White House has never been so good. I would like to emphasize that we are not in a conflict with the U.S. I do not live with a feeling that we are under any threat.

There are those who feel that the road map is worse than the Oslo accords. Some people figure the Americans have caught you off guard, that they led you to believe that the road map is not a serious document and then presented it to you as a fait accompli. Do you not feel that you have been misled?

"No. Not at all. Israel is not a pawn on a chessboard that anyone can move. We live here. It will be impossible to budge Israel on the major matters that are principles of her existence."

Do you feel that the dark and violent period of the past three years is ending?

"I will make every effort to make it end. I do not intend to be passive. The moment a Palestinian state forms I plan to begin working with it. I will not wait for the telephone to ring."

Your finance minister is a Thatcherite, he believes in a small government and a big free market. In the past you were also a Thatcherite. Are you comfortable with the [economic] plan?

"We have reached a stage where difficult measures are necessary. This is a necessary step. therefore I support the plan that Mr. Netanyahu presented to the government."

The whole plan is acceptable to you?

"Everyone can fiddle and find an article here or an article there that he can argue about. But we are talking about these things also. This is a plan that must be passed. We all must stand together on this matter. This is not an easy matter, it is a difficult one, and it requires a great effort from all of us."

Your relationship with Mr. Netanyahu is well known. Are you not sacrificing him? Do you not enjoy watching him sweat?

"No. Not at all. I hear that there is such talk. But I can say with certainty that my relationship with him is good. I am in close communication with him. We talk nearly every day, and sometimes more than once a day."

Do you respect him?

"I think he is an excellent finance minister. He has my full backing, and he will continue to receive my full backing."

Besides the personal question, there is a fiery social and economic debate taking place. Your voice is not heard in this debate. Are you not worried that your government will be viewed as an Ashkenazi, secular and sated government that lacks sufficient social sensitivity?

"I do not think that this government ignores social issues. I also don't think there is any link between social sensitivity and ethnic origin."

Are you enjoying this government more than you did from the previous one?

"I think this is a very good government. It has good ministers and it is handling matters very well. But I enjoyed the previous government also. In my eyes its greatest achievement was that it brought a near end to hatred between the right and the left. This, in my opinion, is one of our greatest achievements."

Still, during the elections, the spirits were inflamed once again. What did you think when you found yourself under fire once more?

"Well, all right, this is not the first time that I encountered such things. Did I feel good about it? I did not. But I knew what the truth was. I knew that the day after the elections it would all disappear. Look, the Jews are great. Really great. The Jewish nation is among the great nations, perhaps the greatest nation. But the Jews also know how to hate."

Do you not think that there was a flaw in the relationship between your son Gilad and Dudu Appel and Cyril Kern or in the relationship between your son Omri and Shlomi Oz?

"Believe me, I am not involved in those things. I do not know the details. I trust my sons."

The sons are an important part of your decision making process? Are they active partners in the handling of the affairs of state?

"These claims are exaggerated. The sons are not part of the handling of the affairs. But our family is very special. I think that Lily [Sharon's late wife] had a part in creating a special atmosphere inside the family. They are good friends, the boys, true friends. I am proud of them."

You are a man that respects action, striving, bravery and friendship. However, maybe the whole matter of rule of law and public ethics does not really relate to you.

"This is a matter that relates to me a great deal. The law is the law and everything related to it must be obeyed. I support keeping the law in full, for everyone, on an equal basis."

founded @ Haaretz.

< my comment >I hope it's happen. But it's also hard to believe after last three years. Perhaps if GWB has some real plan to Arab world than reelect yourself. But I'm affraid that there is no plan than business as usual. I believe the content of his speak. He is a tough militar man, a very tough one, but not a butcher. Benjamin is the butcher, the old pitless terrorist. But we can't forget what Machiavell has told about the Prince: he must prefer be feared than be loved, but he must fear be hated. Hard feelings are very dificult to been forgotten. When a people comes to the point to sacrifice his childs, hate and ressentments are the powerfull affections in theirs souls. Richness and comsumption may help a lot the work of forgot and forgive. A Middle East modernized open space to the peace. That's my point talking about U.S. future plans. But the way of Iraq war had evolved suggest a black humour electoral commedy.< /comment >

2003-04-17T23:21:00.000-03:00

Project for
the New
American Century

Statement of Principles

by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Francis Fukuyama, Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Vin Weber and George Weigel

June 3, 1997

American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.

We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.

As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world's preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?

We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital -- both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements -- built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation's ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead.

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.

Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

- we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;

- we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;

- we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;

- we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

< my comment > The history of Iraq War begin with this document. The PNAC plan has grow and is dealing the cards in global politics. "America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order" is the role played by Iraq invasion. The fall of U.N. and NATO in the International scene are co related to the emergence of U.S. as a militar selfish superpower, master of all rights and with none obligations. With PNAC I'm beginning to publish some old documents related to the "clash of civilizations" problem< /comment >.

more @ PNAC.

2003-04-17T20:53:00.000-03:00

Battlefield Internet Helps
Forces in Iraq to Cut
Down Friendly Fire

by David Rising

A computer system that tracks friendly and enemy forces and pinpoints hazards like minefields on video game-like touch screens got its first use in battle. Commanders are hoping it can cut down on friendly fire deaths.

The Army's 4th Infantry Division is guided by a sophisticated computer network that tracked the division's 1st Brigade during a skirmish Wednesday for the Taji air base north of Baghdad.

The computer network is known as Force 21 Battle Command Brigade and Below, and works as a battlefield Internet that keeps track of fast-moving combat vehicles.

The system's global positioning satellite navigation system also warns whenever a vehicle strays from its planned path.

Proponents say such systems could prevent tragedies like the March 23 ambush deaths of nine soldiers from the 507th Maintenance Company after their convoy took a wrong turn in southern Iraq.

The network "provides a level of situational awareness that is second to none," said 1st Brigade commander Col. Don Campbell.

Campbell and his staff used the battlefield networking system Wednesday to direct his troops - represented by blue icons - toward the positions of "red" Iraqi paramilitaries identified by spotters in helicopters.

Soldiers of 1st Brigade took control of the Taji base, killing four combatants and taking at least two dozen prisoners. There were no American casualties.

Using the system to pinpoint exact vehicle positions also can prevent friendly fire deaths.

On the system's networked screens, blue icons denote friendly forces and are constantly updated. Red icons show the enemy, which are added as they're spotted. The 4th Infantry also has unmanned aircraft that can handle surveillance tasks.

Hazards like minefields, areas where poison gas has been reported or other pitfalls can be added so units can steer clear.

By touching a screen icon, anyone from a commander in the rear to a tank crewman can get specific data about a vehicle - what it is, how fast it is moving and in which direction. If a vehicle is captured, the system has a self-destruct mechanism that can be triggered remotely.

Another touch allows soldiers to send text messages between vehicles or back to the command post, cutting down on radio chatter.

more @ Associated Press.

2003-04-17T20:40:00.000-03:00

U.N. Inspectors Wish to
Return to Iraq but
not Under U.S. Rule

Blix: We're not dogs on a leash.

by Dafna Linzer

U.N. arms inspectors are ready to get back into Iraq to finish the job of looking for any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons but don't want to work under a new U.S.-led disarmament effort.

"We're not dogs on a leash," said chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, who said it was key his teams remain independent. He said U.N. teams would be willing to confirm any discoveries of banned weapons the Americans report, but repeatedly noted that U.S. troops haven't found any such weapons thus far.

The Bush administration said one of the war's main missions was to rid Iraq of the weapons it believes Saddam was concealing. With U.S. troops controlling most of Iraq, Washington has all but replaced the U.N. inspections with its own search for banned Iraqi weapons.

The U.S. teams have visited between three and four dozen sites, a Pentagon official said. So far they haven't found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction but some samples taken Thursday at the Tallil air base needed further testing, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Iraq acknowledged years ago that it had stored chemical artillery shells there during the Gulf War.

But Saddam Hussein's regime had said at least since 1998 that it no longer had such weapons programs.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a failed effort to win international support for the war, told the United Nations in February that U.S. intelligence proved Iraq had such weapons.

But on Thursday Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that U.S. troops would need to rely on the Iraqis to find the weaponry.

"I don't think we'll discover anything, myself," Rumsfeld said. "I think what will happen is we'll discover people who will tell us where to go find it. It is not like a treasure hunt where you just run around looking everywhere, hoping you find something."

No one knows that better than Blix, who came under heavy criticism at times from U.S. officials angered that he wasn't backing their position.

"We had credibility and we didn't lend it to their contentions, and I think that we were right and I think so far nothing has proved us wrong," Blix told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.

The U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, led by Blix, pulled out of Iraq shortly before the war and after 3 1/2 months of work on the ground.

But U.S. officials, deeply skeptical of the U.N. teams, have said privately that they wouldn't be welcome to return right now.

Now the search is being conducted by U.S. disarmament teams, made up of military specialists, scientists and former U.N. inspectors searching for the weapons Iraq was banned from having after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Only in the past few days, Rumsfeld said, have enough weapons searchers arrived in parts of Iraq where U.S. intelligence indicates chemical or biological weapons could be found.

"The teams have been trained in chain of control, really like a crime scene," he said. "That will not stop certain countries and certain types of people from claiming, inaccurately, that it was planted."

Such fears have been privately voiced by Security Council members such as Russia and France, which remain unconvinced that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Both countries want inspectors back in the field as soon as possible as does Secretary-General Kofi Annan who has said only U.N. inspectors - and not the Americans - have the legal authority to oversee Iraqi disarmament.

While the 74-year-old Blix seems eager to return his staff to Baghdad, he said he would wait for a nod from the Security Council.

Blix's also displayed ambivalence about working with the Americans.

"When American and British inspectors have been all over the country I would imagine they would like to tell us what they have seen and perhaps show us what they have seen. But we're not going to be dogs on a leash. We have a mandate from the Security Council, and credibility requires that we have independent judgment," he said.

more @ Associated Press.

2003-04-17T18:15:00.000-03:00

U.S. digs, searches
in vain for
Iraqi chemical weapons

by Adrian Croft

A U.S. military excavator shovels another load of mud on to a canal bank near the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya, cutting a deep trench.

The mechanical digger strikes a slab of concrete, raising hopes this could be a hidden dump of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction -- a nuclear, biological or chemical "smoking gun" to help justify the U.S.-led war to oust the Iraqi leader.

Nothing is found.

After days of intense digging and searching at least seven suspicious sites near Nassiriya, U.S. experts have found chemical warfare protective suits, but no chemical weapons.

Chief Warrant Officer Alex Robinson, leading the U.S. search in the area, admitted on Thursday that his list of suspect sites in southern Iraq was "kind of drying up".

"I guess the main focus of effort is around Baghdad and maybe a little bit to the north and the west where they think a lot of the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) have been secreted or the labs are located underground," he told Reuters.

Robinson said his team's various inspections had found an antidote to nerve gas, but had otherwise turned up "regular laboratory chemicals that you'd find in a high school lab."

A trailer at the back of a military hospital, suspected of being a mobile chemical weapons laboratory, turned out to be a cooking trailer, while a laboratory the U.S. team visited was for research into concrete and asphalt work, he said.

"Those are the kind of tip-offs we get. We don't want to discount anything. The one you don't go to look at will be the one that has whatever it is you want to find," said Robinson, who comes from Carlsbad, California.

Many of the tips come from local residents, convinced that mustard gas or other lethal weapons were being produced at the sites, he said.

Washington's conviction that, despite his denials, Saddam retained weapons of mass destruction -- from lethal gases to deadly nerve agents -- and was ready to use them was the main justification for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

more @ Reuters AlertNet.

2003-04-17T15:24:00.000-03:00

Anti-American protests
intensify in Iraq
After U.S. Liberation

Anti-American protests intensified here and in southern Iraq as US forces struggled with the complex task of rebuilding the country after toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Exasperated US military officials tried to hamper the media from covering new demonstrations in Baghdad on Tuesday while some 20,000 people in the Shiite Muslim bastion of Nasiriyah railed against a US-staged meeting on Iraq's future.

The protests came as the Americans delivered a first progress report in their effort to restore Iraq to normalcy and head off a chorus of criticism over continued lawlessness and a lack of basic services.

Some 200-300 Iraqis gathered Tuesday outside the Palestine Hotel, where the US marines have set up an operations base, for a third straight day of protests against the US occupation.

For the first time, visibly angered US military officials sought to distance the media from the protest, moving reporters and cameras about 30 meters (yards) from the barbed-wired entrance to the hotel.

"We want you to pull back to the back of the hotel because they (the Iraqis) are only performing because the media are here," said a marine colonel who wore the name Zarcone but would not give his first name or title.

The crowd later moved to the nearby square where the statue of Saddam was toppled Wednesday to signal the end of the regime. As three of the marines' armored amphibious vehicles passed by, they chanted: "No, no, USA."

Meanwhile, demonstrators marched to the center of the predominantly Shiite southern city of Nasiriyah, chanting "Yes to freedom ... Yes to Islam ... No to America, No to Saddam."

They were protesting a meeting of Iraqi opposition groups convened at a nearby military base in an initial attempt by the United States to plot out a political future for the post-Saddam Iraq.

"We want the American and British forces to go. They have freed us from Saddam and their job is finished," said Ihsan Mohammad, an official with the regional federation of engineers.

"If they intend to occupy us, we will oppose that. We ask them to leave us free to decide our future and not to impose people on us."

Although US officials have all but declared their military campaign over, tensions with the civilian population persist over a lack of police protection, water, electricity and other basic services.

more @ Yahoo News.

2003-04-17T06:19:00.000-03:00

Rumsfeld, Rice and
Wolfowitz Defeat Powell's
Secretary of State

Affairs of State - and Pentagon

by John Prados

The Bush administration's adventure to Baghdad is causing a shift in the constellation of the heavens, the inner circle of Bush advisers who play a key role in what policies the United States pursues. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld consolidates more power into his own hands with each passing week, and signs point to a re-emergence of the authority that national security advisers once wielded in the bad old days of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The portents to be read here are disturbing.

Rumsfeld masterminded the Iraq invasion, and believes the result vindicates his early and repeated demands for cheaper, smaller but swifter military operations presumed to blind the foe through dazzling rapidity of action. Politically vulnerable before 9/11 owing to his autocratic management of the professional military and his tenuous relationship with Capitol Hill, Rumsfeld benefited from the period building up to the Iraq invasion. The drive to muster support for President Bush's war plans muted opposition to the Pentagon leader -- and now the initial success of the invasion has defanged Rumsfeld's political opponents and made him unassailable among military ranks.

The rising exuberance of the Pentagon leadership is plain. For one thing, Rumsfeld framed his request for supplemental budget funds to pay for the war in a way that hands him sole control over where the money is spent (usually Congress budgets money to specific programs). He also has a project afoot that will allow him to hire and fire top generals, further cowing the professionals.

For another, Syria's sudden emergence as a target on the U.S. enemies list further reflects the primacy of Pentagon interests. One day Syria was a collaborator in the war on terrorism, doing notable favors for the CIA. Then, in the midst of the Iraqi campaign, Rumsfeld and other Pentagon spokespersons began accusing Damascus of helping Saddam Hussein's forces. Now Syria is being mentioned in the same breath with Iran and North Korea. The transformation took mere days. Next, there is the competition with Central Intelligence Agency. Just last week Rumsfeld scored Senate confirmation for his aide Stephen Cambone in the new post of Under Secretary-designate for Intelligence. This move will allow the Defense Department to consolidate its intelligence programs in a way that could undermine CIA head George Tenet's role.

All these signs suggest that both Rumsfeld's freedom of action and his agenda are expanding exponentially.

Missing in all this is the man responsible -- at least by law -- for foreign policy, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. For all that has been seen of Powell in recent weeks, he might as well be hiding in the administration's proverbial undisclosed location.

Since February, when Secretary Powell made a speech at the United Nations laying out intelligence claims that Saddam possessed a massive infrastructure to produce weapons of mass destruction (which has emerged nowhere, so far, as U.S. forces actually occupy Iraq), the administration's premier moderate has fallen into line behind the extremists.

The diplomatic fiasco caused by pushing for a U.N. resolution authorizing war proved Powell's warnings about building a coalition accurate. The result of his spot-on prediction: The State Department is being relegated to total irrelevance.

On the rise instead -- along with Rumsfeld's empire -- is a newly resplendent national security adviser and her National Security Council (NSC) staff. Condoleezza Rice emerged as a key Bush administration advocate during the war's buildup, a frequent figure on the talk shows and anywhere the White House message needed articulation.

Rice's visibility has grown far greater than that of her predecessors in the Clinton White House, and now approaches that of the classic NSC potentates Kissinger and Brzezinski. Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley also led key Bush administration units orchestrating prewar and wartime propaganda moves.

In the last month the United States has undertaken two vital diplomatic missions. One, during the push for the U.N. resolution, was an attempt to pressure chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to issue a more negative report on Iraqi compliance with weapons inspections, seen as helping the U.S. push for the war resolution. The second mission, which occurred last week, was a visit to Moscow to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Condoleezza Rice, not the secretary of state, carried out both these missions. Rice is clearly acquiring roles and powers that carry the mantle of the strong NSC of the 1970s.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is getting in on the action, too. In December it was Wolfowitz, not a State Department official, who flew to Ankara for talks with Turkish leaders about support for the war. Now he's busy arranging "town hall meetings" -- to be led by General Tommy Franks -- for Iraqis to discuss rebuilding, albeit in an invitation-only forum. And if you're wondering what Powell is up to, it sounds as if he has a new job as Pentagon errand boy: Wolfowitz recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon had sent the State Department a list of needs -- i.e., the kinds of people and services that the State Department should solicit from European countries for help in rebuilding.

This evolution is disturbing. Rumsfeld and Rice, while ambitious planners, exhibit a peculiar myopia. With Iraq collapsing into chaos and looters trashing Baghdad and other cities, Rumsfeld complained at his press conferences not of these brutal facts, but of the media's reporting of them. In fact, the administration talked as if the chaos would disappear on its own after a day or two, as if it carried no responsibility for order in a post-Saddam Iraq it had itself created.

As we move into the reconstruction period in post-war Iraq and toward a looming conflict with Syria, the seamless transfer of powers from the State Department to the Pentagon should alarm us. Are we to understand that the Bush administration now views U.S. "diplomatic" efforts in the Middle East as a solely military effort?

founded @ Tom Paine Common Sense.

2003-04-17T06:17:00.000-03:00

ACM Awards its Turing
Prize to Internet
Security Researchers

Honoring three researchers who worked together at MIT in 1977 to develop the RSA public-key encryption algorithm to protect Internet communications between people who have no previous relation, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has given its 2002 A.M. Turing Award to Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard M. Adleman. Rivest is still at MIT, whereas Shamir is at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and Adleman is at the University of Southern California. The $100,000 prize is funded by Intel.

more @ New York Times.

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2003-04-17T06:08:00.000-03:00

Anomaly Make
Intel Halts Shipment
of Fast Chips

Intel has halted shipment of its new Pentium 4 chips because it found a problem (an "anomaly" in the words of Intel engineers) in a small number of the chips. Saying he doesn't expect Intel's move to have any major impact on Intel or the PC makers who use Intel chips, industry analyst Ashok Kumar of U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray comments approvingly that Intel is "becoming much more pro-active and sensitive to any deviation to the specs. They are much more sensitive in terms of what their name means. As long as it has `Intel Inside,' they have to stand by their product.''

more @ Mercury News.

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2003-04-17T05:56:00.000-03:00

Googles Juggling
Act Move into
Revenue-Generating

Google's aggressive move into revenue-generating ventures over the past two years is changing the way it presents information and could tarnish its reputation as one of the more untainted search engines, say critics. In addition to devising new schemes for advertisers, Google has gotten its foot in the door in the corporate market, peddling a combined hardware and software approach to corporate searching. And while that's a fairly limited market, Google could use its corporate search product as a launch pad into the wider realms of information retrieval and knowledge management, says Forrester analyst Laura Ramos, where there is an increasingly significant demand by businesses for search tools that work across different applications, such as Web content management, customer support, e-mail and databases. "I think (corporate search is) potentially lucrative because of Google's brand and reputation." But critics are grumbling that Google could begin to lose its credibility if too much of its business becomes ad-driven rather than search-related and say they fear that Google could use its dominant position to manipulate Web searchers without their knowledge. "Google has discovered there's a ton of money to be made, and they're going for the gold. The only purpose for Google to crawl the rest of the (noncommercial) Web is to legitimize themselves as a search engine," says David Brandt, president of Public Information Research, which publishes
the Google-watch.org Web site.

more @ E-Commerce Times.

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2003-04-17T05:39:00.000-03:00

Court Blocks
Presentation on Hacking
University Systems

A Georgia state court has issued a restraining order prohibiting two students from making a conference presentation on how to break into and modify a university electronic transactions system. Blackboard, an education software company, argued that the information in the presentation was gained illegally and would have harmed the company's commercial interests and those of its clients, but Interz0ne conference organizers argued that the students' free speech rights were abridged. "The temporary restraining order pointed out that the irreparable injury to Blackboard, our intellectual property rights and clients far outweighed the commercial speech rights of the individuals in question," said a Blackboard spokesman. The information was gleaned after one of the students had physically broken into a network and switching device on his campus and subsequently figured out how to emulate Blackboard's technology. Because that alleged act was illegal,
publication of the resulting information should be blocked, said the court. The court's decision was grounded largely in federal and Georgia state antihacking laws and a state trade secrets act, rather than the Digital Millennium Copyright Law, which has been invoked in several similar cases.

more @ CNet News.

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2003-04-17T05:30:00.000-03:00

Europe Cell Phone
Makers Push
Push -to -Talk

Europe's largest cell phone makers are touting a new twist on an old idea -- push-to-talk -- as a way for operators to boost revenue and cut down on customer churn at little investment expense. The concept has proven successful for Nextel, which launched its Direct Connect service aimed at business customers a decade ago. With push-to-talk, users set up a group of friends or colleagues who can then be contacted simultaneously by pushing a button on the handset. Only one person can talk at a time, and there's a slight transmission delay, but the service has proven a money-maker for Nextel, which collects more revenue per subscriber than its rivals do and boasts a more loyal customer base. "There is just a dearth of new services," says one telecom-operator analyst. "The phones are getting sexier, no doubt. But beyond photo-messaging, find me a new service? Well, here's one, so perhaps I shouldn't be so churlish about it." Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens announced plans in February to develop a common standard for push-to-talk on cellular networks, and several major U.S. carriers are planning to launch a push-to-talk service, perhaps by the end of the year. Meanwhile, European operators are watching to gauge consumer enthusiasm in the U.S. before they debut their own services.

more @ Wall Stret Journal. (subscription required)

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2003-04-17T05:22:00.000-03:00

Cyberattack
Statistics: Up,
Up and Away

Although computers have up to this point been spared a major cyberattack from terrorists or rogue nations, there have been plenty of smaller acts of vandalism by individual troublemakers. The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) tracked 52,658 online security incidents in 2001, more than double the number reported in the previous year, and more than four times the number reported the year before that. Figures for 2002 are not yet available.

more @ USA Today.

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2003-04-17T05:15:00.000-03:00

United Parcel
Service Device
Connects Six Ways

United Parcel Service is giving its drivers new handheld devices that connect to six different wireless networks. The Delivery Information Acquisition Device (DIAD) connects via infrared, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and two cell networks: CDMA1x and GSM/GPRS. "It reminded me of 'shock and awe,'" says telecom analyst Jeff Kagan. "There are just so many different kinds of weapons, tools and technologies." A UPS manager says the handheld's battery, which is about the same size as a typical laptop battery, has enough power to last through normal workday because a driver likely would use only two connections at a time -- for instance, using Bluetooth to read a packing slip and then connecting to a cell phone network to send information back to UPS headquarters.

more @ CNet News.

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2003-04-16T06:14:00.000-03:00

Cheney's Former
Company Profits from
Supporting Troops

by Pratap Chatterjee

As the first bombs rain down on Baghdad, CorpWatch has learned that thousands of employees of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, are working alongside US troops in Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth close to a billion dollars. According to US Army sources, they are building tent cities and providing logistical support for the war in Iraq in addition to other hot spots in the "war on terrorism."

While recent news coverage has speculated on the post-war reconstruction gravy train that corporations like Halliburton stand to gain from, this latest information indicates that Halliburton is already profiting from war time contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Cheney served as chief executive of Halliburton until he stepped down to become George W. Bush's running mate in the 2000 presidential race. Today he still draws compensation of up to a million dollars a year from the company, although his spokesperson denies that the White House helped the company win the contract.

In December 2001, Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, secured a 10-year deal known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), from the Pentagon. The contract is a "cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service" which basically means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send Brown and Root anywhere in the world to run military operations for a profit.

Linda Theis, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Field Support Command in Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, confirmed for Corpwatch that Brown and Root is also supporting operations in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Georgia, Jordan and Uzbekistan.

"Specific locations along with military units, number of personnel assigned, and dates of duration are considered classified," she said. "The overall anticipated cost of task orders awarded since contract award in December 2001 is approximately $830 million."

more @ CorpWatch.

2003-04-16T04:00:00.000-03:00

The Spoils of War
Coverage: Wasting
the Beautiful Mind

Should we never have watched at all?

by Frank Rich

So Barbara Bush had instructed us in a "Good Morning America" interview showcased the day before the war began. The president's mother told Diane Sawyer she would watch "none" of TV's war coverage because "90 percent" of it would be speculative. Mrs. Bush continued: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? . . . It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

A beautiful mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste, but not having one, I took Mrs. Bush's words as the see-no-evil musings of a mom spinning for her son. Now that the fog of war begins to lift, however, I realize she was prescient. A Los Angeles Times poll last weekend found that 69 percent of Americans turned to the three cable news networks first for war coverage — with newspapers, local TV news, regular network news and the Internet trailing far behind. But to what end? If cable has taught us anything during "War in Iraq," it is this: battalions of anchors and high-tech correspondents can cover a war 24/7 and still tell us less about what is going on than the mere 27 predigital news hounds who accompanied the American troops landing in Normandy on D-Day.

Speculation, while rampant, has in some ways been the least of the coverage's ills. By this point we instinctively know that whenever a rent-a-general walks over to a map, it's time to take a latrine break. What has most defined this TV war on cable is the networks' insistence on letting their own scorched-earth campaigns for brand supremacy run roughshod over the real action in Iraq. The conveying of actual news often seems subsidiary to their mission to out-flag-wave one another and to make their own personnel, rather than the war's antagonists, the leading players in the drama. For anchors like Brian Williams and Wolf Blitzer, Kuwait City is a backdrop that lends a certain amount of gravitas (though not as much as it would have during the last Persian Gulf war), but couldn't they anchor just as well from New York City? It's not as if they're vying to interview the locals. While a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that reports from embedded journalists were 94 percent accurate, it also discovered that in only 20 percent of those reports did the correspondents share the screen with anyone else.

There's almost nothing in the war, it seems, that cannot be exploited as a network promo. Fox's anchors trumpeted an idle news-briefing remark by Gen. Richard B. Myers that "reporters just have to be fair and balanced, that's all" as an official endorsement of the network's "fair and balanced" advertising slogan. At CNN, a noble effort by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, an embedded medical reporter, to rescue an injured 2-year-old Iraqi boy by performing on-the-scene brain surgery was milked for live reports. Lest anyone not grasp the most important moral of this incident, Dr. Gupta himself declared that "it was a heroic attempt to try to save the child's life" after the child had died.

As for MSNBC — last in war, last in peace, last in the Nielsens with or without "Donahue" — the battles for Basra and Baghdad were mere bagatelles compared to its take-no-prisoners battle with Fox to emerge as the most patriotic news channel in the land. Who was the most "treasonous" villain in the war? According to MSNBC, it was Fox's Geraldo Rivera, who revealed American troop movements on camera. According to Fox, it was MSNBC's Peter Arnett, who gave an interview to Iraqi TV. As the two networks stoked the flames of this bonfire of the vanities, neither took time out from their proxy war to devote much (if any) coverage to an actual American serviceman who might have committed actual treason. That would be Sgt. Asan Akbar of the 101st Airborne, who was arrested (and subsequently charged with murder) in the fragging incident that led to the deaths of two soldiers and the wounding of at least 14 others at Camp Pennsylvania. How fleeting was his infamy.

But it's not only the Sergeant Akbar story that has vanished from view. Whatever happened to Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the Israelis and the Palestinians? TV viewers are now on more intimate terms with Aaron Brown and Shep Smith's perceptions of the war than we are with the collective thoughts of all those soon-to-be liberated "Iraqi people" they keep apotheosizing. Iraqis are the better-seen-than-heard dress extras in this drama, alternately pictured as sobbing, snarling or cheering. Even Saddam Hussein remains a villain from stock, since the specific history of his reign of terror gets far less airtime than the tacky décor of his palaces and the circular information-free debates about whether he's dead or alive. When Victoria Clarke at the Pentagon says Saddam is responsible for "decades and decades and decades of torture and oppression the likes of which I think the world has not ever seen before," no one on Fox or MSNBC is going to gainsay her by bringing up Hitler and Stalin. To so much as suggest that the world may have seen thugs even more evil than Saddam is to engage in moral relativism — which, in the prevailing Foxspeak of the moment, is itself tantamount to treason.

In retrospect we can see that patriotism as a TV news marketing ploy was inevitable after Dan Rather took flak for interviewing Saddam in February. There was nothing either exceptional or un-American about Mr. Rather's interview; it showed us a calculating dictator spewing unalloyed propaganda, none of which earned him the sympathy of any American viewers. But the uproar that ensued, stoked by the White House, sent the clear message that news not upholding the administration's message was verboten during wartime (unless the critique is delivered by paid network military consultants).

more @ New York Times.

2003-04-16T03:30:00.000-03:00

Why Should the
Iraqi People Feel
Gratitude to Saddam

by Mani Shankar Aiyar

Why should the Iraqi people feel any gratitude or loyalty to President Saddam Hussein. You would not know it from anything that has been written in the U.S. or British media, but there are very good reasons.

I was commercial counselor and deputy chief of mission at the Indian Embassy in Baghdad from 1976 to 1978. During the interregnum between two ambassadors, I was also for a while the Indian charge d'affaires. This explains why I had more than one occasion to stare into Saddam's expressionless grey-green eyes -- straight out of "The Day of the Jackal" -- while shaking his hand at various official banquets and other ceremonial occasions.

Saddam ran a brutal dictatorship. That, however, caused no concern to the hordes of Western businessmen who descended in droves on Iraq to siphon what they could of Iraq's newfound oil wealth through lucrative contracts for everything. Everything -- from eggs to nuclear plants. Because technologically, from the end of the Turkish Empire over Iraq in 1919 through the British mandate, which lasted till 1932, and the effete monarchy masterminded by Anthony Eden's buddy, Nuri es-Said, right up to the Baath Party coup of 1968, there was virtually no progress at all.

Iraqi latifundia -- the vast country house estates of the tiny privileged elite -- gave large parties for visiting Western guests, including Agatha Christie's archaeologist husband who did most of his digging in Nineveh, now known worldwide to TV viewers as Mosul, while the puppet ruling establishment gave away Iraq's most precious asset, oil, for a song. Iraq's major export was -- hold your Patriot missile -- dates, the fruit of the Arab desert eaten by pious Muslims to break their daylight fast during the Muslim Lent -- Ramadan. India was Iraq's largest buyer.

It was Saddam's revolution that ended Iraqi backwardness. Education, including higher and technological education, became the top priority. More important, centuries of vicious discrimination against girls and women was ended by one stroke of the modernizing dictator's pen.

I used to drive past the Mustansariya University on my way home from downtown Baghdad. It was miraculous -- I use the word advisedly -- it was nothing short of miraculous to see hundreds of girl-students thronging the campus, none in "burkhas" or "chador" -- the head-to-toe black cape that was, and is, essential dress for women in most of the Islamic world -- and almost all in skirts and blouses that would grace a Western university.

The liberation of women -- that is half the population of Iraq, as for any other country -- has been the most dramatic achievement of Saddam's regime. To understand how dramatic just look across the Iraqi border at America's once-favorite Arab satrap, Saudi Arabia.

more @ United Press International.

2003-04-14T01:18:00.000-03:00

U.S. and U.K. in Desperation
Searching Weapons of
Mass Destruction in Iraq

Weapons teams scour Iraq

by Nicholas Watt, Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor

Secret units in desperate hunt for banned arsenal.

Britain and the United States have bypassed the United Nations to establish a secret team of inspectors to resume the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

It is a sign of the desperation in London and Washington to find a "smoking gun" to justify the war that the Anglo-American team has already conducted three inspections in the past two weeks.

No banned weapons have so far been found.

The decision to set up a new group of inspectors, dubbed US-movic because they are an American-led rival to Unmovic, will infuriate the U.N.

Kofi Annan, the secretary general, pointedly reminded Britain and the U.S. this week that Unmovic still has a mandate to carry out inspections.

Last night the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, added his criticism by saying that war against Iraq was a foregone conclusion months before the first shot was fired.

In a scathing attack on Britain and the US, Mr Blix accused them of planning the war "well in advance" and of "fabricating" evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign.

Mr Blix told the Spanish daily El Pais: "There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the [weapons] inspections."

He said Iraq was paying "a very high price _ in terms of human lives and the destruction of a country" when the threat of banned weapons could have been contained by UN inspections.

more @ The Guardian.

2003-04-12T17:46:00.000-03:00

A Washington D.C. policeman knocks down an anti-war protester during the march in Washington.

Police Violence
Against Protesters on
Washington Demonstration

Pro War Rally Protected, Anti War March Attacked by U.S. Police

As a police helicopter circled above and police cruisers and motorcycles zoomed through the streets, hundreds of demonstrators gathered near the White House to rally against the U.S. presence in Iraq and what they say is biased media coverage of the war.

Washington D.C. Police knock down a group of anti-war protesters during a march in Washington.

"Embedded reporters are in bed with the Pentagon," said Larry Holmes to a vocal crowd at a rally organized by International ANSWER, a coalition of groups opposing the war.

"The major media would give you the impression that all Americans support the war. We'll be giving them a piece of our minds as we pass (by) the most notorious (media company offices)," he said.

Later, thousands of anti-war demonstrators, many with placards and signs, marched through downtown Washington streets closed to automobile traffic.

more @ Reuters.

2003-04-12T15:51:00.000-03:00

This aerial view shows a rainbow colored peace banner, about 500 meters long, carried by peace demonstrators through central Rome

Europe Protesters
Demands the End of
Iraq`s Military Intervention

Antiwar Protesters Switch Focus to Iraq Occupation

by Christian Oliver

Thousands of peace campaigners poured onto the streets of Europe and elsewhere on Saturday switching their focus from preventing war on Iraq to protesting against the continuing U.S. and British military presence.

Although U.S. and British officials say the military operation is drawing to an end after the fall of President Saddam Hussein's government, activists said their concerns were as grave as ever.

Anti-war protesters march during a peace rally in Seville.

"It is good Saddam has gone but we cannot forget this war is illegal and without the sanction of the United Nations. It is setting a very dangerous precedent of pre-emption," Pakistani politician and former international cricketer Imran Khan told Reuters as he joined a mass rally in London's Hyde Park.

"No country should have the right to be judge, jury and executioner. That is the reason the U.N. was set up -- to protect the weak from the strong. But this war sets a precedent where might is right and undermines the U.N.."

Organizers estimated 100,000 people marched through the city center, waving banners saying "No Occupation of Iraq" and chanting "Bush, Blair, CIA, how many kids have you killed today?." Police put the numbers at closer to 20,000.

In the Italian capital Rome, a march originally organized to call for an end to the fighting changed its slogan to "No to an infinite and global war."

"This war is far from over and anyway it will have terrible effects on the Middle East and maybe on the whole world," university professor Umberto Allegretti who joined the protest.

TV footage showed a giant rainbow banner, about 0.5km long (500 yards), being pulled around the Circus Maximus where Romans used to race chariots.

more @ Reuters.

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